


The Time Before

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, F/M, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:12:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 80,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8438080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: “This isn’t right. None of this is how he’d pictured it. He’d wanted forgiveness from Laurel – all of Laurel. The Laurel he’d fallen in love with; the Laurel who knew what he’d done and could maybe, somehow, find it in herself to love him anyway. Not this Laurel. Not this Laurel without her memories who doesn’t know him, doesn’t know herself, has no idea who he really is and why she should run in the opposite direction the first chance she gets, far, far away from him.”Or, after an accident Laurel loses her memory of the past year; everything she’d done, everyone she’d met – including one Frank Delfino.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Waaaaa here's the amnesia fic I've been talking about for a long ass time!! Cliche? Yes. Necessary? Also yes. Normally I don't publish fics that aren't completed, but I'm 15 chapters into this one with a fairly solid idea of where I'm going, and I wanted to get this out before the end of October, so here I am!! I began this back over the summer before we knew what kind of shirtstorm was coming our way in s3, so this begins about a month after Frank left and... ignores season 3. Like I'm currently trying to do. Also Frank has his beard because I refuse to write beardless Frank.
> 
> This probably won't get updated more than once a week/maybe longer, just to give me time to finish the rest of it up/work on other things. Aaaaand that's all I have for now!!! Enjoy babes :)

She drives to escape. She drives to feel like she’s free; like she’s a person, again.  

It’s oddly comforting, in a way. The sounds are rhythmic, deadening her senses and clearing her head: the low hum of the road beneath her, the bolts of white lightning splitting open the sky, the pelting of raindrops blurring her windshield. The deceptively chipper guitars of ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ playing faintly on the radio as the singer croons about Romeo and Juliet and death and the beauty of the other side. Her grip on the wheel is so tight her knuckles are ghost white, making her hands look almost corpse-like, dead; dead hands, and she figures she might as well be dead. The road ahead is dim, just a circle of grey pavement, illuminated by her headlights. It’s almost hypnotic to watch; the way it never ends, just keeps going, one continuous bleak stretch of roadway to carry her, thumping under her tires.

She keeps going. She flies. She should heed advice of the speed limit, maybe, and slow down.

She won’t.

She accelerates instead, the car lurching forward with a _vroom_. She has no real destination. To find Frank, she thinks, irrationally. She’ll drive and drive and drive until she finds him, and she doesn’t know what she’ll do when she does but she’ll figure that part out later; act first, think later. She can’t stay in that city another minute, in that office with those people, with all that blood on her hands. It’s suffocating. She thinks she’d rather die than go back there.

A laugh bubbles up in her chest, dark and bitter. She might die going back there anyway; murder has become a bi-monthly occurrence, and their body count can only go one way, and that way is up. It’s not even shocking to think about, now. Used to be it terrified her to her bones to think of what they’d done.

Used to be she was a good person. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.

> _Come on baby_  
>  _(Don't fear the reaper)_  
>  _Baby take my hand_  
>  _(Don't fear the reaper)_  
>  _We'll be able to fly_  
>  _(Don't fear the reaper)_

All the death they’ve wrought. All the destruction. _I am become death, the destroyer of worlds_. Oppenheimer. She wishes she could feel bad about that. She tries to, tries hard, and comes up empty. She feels numb, like she’s been beaten so many times she no longer feels the blows.

She thinks, maybe, she’s forgotten how to feel at all.

She protects them all, from everything, all the time. She’s protected Wes, done all she can, given and given and given of herself until she has absolutely fucking _nothing_ left to give, her vats of humanity running dry. She’s protected Michaela from herself, keeping her ring. She’s protected Connor from himself, too – from telling Oliver and getting them all sent to prison. She’s protected them all from the truth about Lila, and in doing so has let that same truth eat her alive like a parasite. She watches them all, keeps them in line.

She’s a candle burning at both ends. She never asked for this, any of this. Never asked to be the _de facto_ mother of the group. Never asked to fall in love with a murderer. Never asked to be so damn responsible, so level-headed, so calm and collected, about everything. Never asked to be the only one who isn’t allowed to lose it, ever; the one who always has to bottle things up, keep them contained in a tight little locked box inside herself, because God forbid they escape and she be something less than strong, for once.

She feels more in control, when she’s driving. That’s why she does it, and maybe it’s stupid. Maybe it doesn’t make much sense – but she’s in control here where in the real world she is not, hands on the wheel, guiding this machine, able to take it and herself anywhere in the world.

Laurel doesn’t know why it happens, exactly. She doesn’t see it coming.

She misses it, somehow: the yellow sign on the side of the road, telling her to reduce her speed, that there’s a sharp turn ahead, that she needs to be driving less than the hundred miles an hour or so she’s going now; she’s flying, she’s forgetting, and she wouldn’t give that up for anything in the world. She flies, too close to the sun – Icarus in a Honda Civic.

And then she sees the turn, and the metal barrier in front of a wooded area, off the side of the highway. And she sees that turn too late, far too late to stop herself, and she swerves, not knowing what she’s trying to do, just trying to stop, and her tires skid because it’s raining and fail to get traction and _screech_ on the wet pavement, and she can’t stop, _she_ _can’t stop._

Her wings melt.

She comes crashing back down unceremoniously to earth with the high-pitched shrieking of the tires accompanying her, as she jams the brake pedal through the floor, and the force of the impact slams into her, shoving her forward and back and knocking her sideways then _all_ ways, rattling her. Glass shatters. There’s some crunching sound – metal. A low hiss, the hissing steam of the engine. The car might be rolling. It might even be upside down. She wouldn’t be able to say which for sure.

> _Come on baby_  
>  _(And she had no fear)_  
>  _And she ran to him_  
>  _(Then they started to fly)_  
>  _They looked backward and said goodbye_  
>  _(She had become like they are-_

The radio crackles, then dies and goes silent. Something warm and thick is dripping down the side of her face. Everything is strikingly still. There’s a sickening metallic scent in the air. She hurts all over. The pain sears – not burns; sears, _scalds_. It’s too dark to see anything. She can’t breathe, and she’s slipping and the darkness is slithering in towards her from all sides, boxing her in. She tries to move. Fails. Tries again – and fails again. Her mind is cloudy and it doesn’t seem to be working like it should, and she tries to make it tell her legs to move but it refuses, like it’s severed its connection to her, and it won’t work, why won’t it _work_ …

She always thought there’d be a light, at the end, but there’s no light. There’s only more blackness and it’s not warm or inviting; it’s cold. It’s so cold it burns. This is what Lila had felt, she thinks. This is what it’d been like for her, no white light, no smiling benevolent God, no gates of heaven with a welcome sign on them, no joyously running into the arms of Death. Just nothing. She’d died afraid, and she’d died alone.

Laurel doesn’t want to die alone.

She doesn’t want to die at all. She knows that, now. Not that she particularly wants to live anymore, but she doesn’t want to _die_. She tries to remember a prayer, any prayer, any words of salvation she’d dutifully recited as a girl at Sunday Mass staring up at that big wooden statue of Christ on the cross, and once again comes up empty.

All she comes up with is more darkness, thick as tar. So thick it drowns her.  

 

~

 

It’s 3:49 AM when his phone rings.

It rouses him from a dreamless sleep, and he sits up in bed, groggy, glancing over at the nightstand. His burner flip phone is lighting up, glowing orange, vibrating and buzzing so hard it nearly goes toppling over the edge, and when he sees it it startles him back into consciousness, like a bolt of electricity straight to his brain stem.

Only one person has that number.

“Bon?” he rasps, flipping it open and raising it to his ear. “What’s goin’ on?”

Bonnie doesn’t waste a single second. She doesn’t even greet him back; she just starts talking right away, so fast and panicked he’s having trouble computing her words, in his sleep-addled state. She sounds afraid. Bonnie is not easily scared, not in the least – and she sounds afraid.

“ _Frank, you need to get back here. It’s Laurel_.”

His throat locks up, just hearing Laurel’s name. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“ _She’s been in a car accident. Bad one. Really bad. I… She’s in the hospital, in surgery, right now. When they brought her in she was unconscious, and she hasn’t woken up and… Frank, they don’t know for sure how long she’s got, if she’s even gonna make it through the night. You need to get back here now_ , _right_ now-”

Laurel. _Laurel Laurel Laurel Laurel_. He doesn’t comprehend the words; they don’t sound like English, or any language he’s ever heard in his life. His brain is misfiring like a short-circuiting fuse box, sparks flying everywhere in his skull. He only catches a few words, latching onto fragments. Laurel. Car accident. Bad. You need to get back here. How long she’s got. If she’s gonna make it.

_If she’s gonna make it_.

“Wait – Bon, what do you… She…” he sputters the words. Terror cracks him open, splits him in two, reaches out and cracks his ribcage and settles inside the cold, gaping cavity where his heart should be. “No, that-”

“ _Get down to Jefferson. Now_.”

A click. The line goes dead.

For a moment he just stares out into the fuzzy greyness around him, unmoving. The walls of the shitty motel room suddenly feel infinitely smaller, with sinister intent, like they’re closing in. He tries to breathe, gulp in air, and can’t. His whole chest is constricting, lungs collapsing, his own body trying to crush him to death.  

Laurel. Laurel. God no. Fuck, _no no no._ This isn’t real. It is not. It’s a nightmare. Some sick fucking joke his subconscious is playing on him, by exploiting his worst fear: losing Laurel for good. Reality feels warped, suddenly.

Reality doesn’t feel like reality.

Time slows to turtle speed. Or maybe it fast-forwards. Or maybe it stops entirely. Whatever it does, he can’t move, might as well be frozen in place, limbs as heavy as thousand-pound weights. The words play like a mantra in his head. This is not real. This is not real. This _is not_ real.

Laurel. He pictures her the last time he saw her, all blue-grey eyes full of strength and dark hair and the most beautiful smile in the world, and her arms, which had always felt like home to him. His heart aches, twists, contorts into some shape that is most definitely a medical abnormality. He’d left her. He hadn’t said goodbye.

Now he might never get to.

He wants to be sick. He’s not overly familiar with what panic attacks feel like, but he thinks this must be one, or something close to one, and so he bows his head to steady his breathing, placing it in his hands, before running a hand through his hair and bolting upright. He goes into some manic state, his mind in tatters yet somehow intensely focused, crossing the room, grabbing his suitcase, hauling it onto the bed, and cramming everything he can see into it. He’s out the door in minutes, not bothering to take a second look around to see if he’d left anything behind.

He doesn’t care. Doesn’t look back. Things are things; things are replaceable. His mind knows one singular thought. _Laurel_. He loves her so much it hurts, so much his hands shake when he jams the key in the ignition of his car, so much his whole body vibrates with terror. He’ll lose her. _Can’t_. He can’t lose her. He’d go fucking insane if she was gone. He’d be as good as dead, too.

He tears out onto the highway at least twice as fast as the speed limit, then quickly reminds himself to slow down; it won’t do either of them any good if he almost dies in a car accident, too, so he forces himself to obey the numbers stamped on the white signs, and focus his eyes ahead. His motel had been almost two hours outside the city; it might as well be two days.

He might not have two hours. He could be too late.

So he steps on it, forcing the gas pedal down to the floor and nearly out the bottom of the car. He flies, focused and steady, with her face before his eyes. For a fleeting moment he imagines she’s in the seat next to him, dialing through his radio, singing along, laughing at his stupid jokes, feet up on the dashboard, her hair blowing in the breeze, soaking up the sun, golden and radiant and glowing. He sees it so clearly that for a second he’s almost sure it’s real.

He flies home to Philly like that, with her apparition accompanying him. He flies home, to her.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s cliché, but Frank hates hospitals. Fucking hates them.

He hates the dingy atmosphere of death and doom that hangs over every room like an ever-present grey haze. Hates the blindingly white floors and walls, all without color, _hell, give them some damn color_. Hates the way they look like how he imagines purgatory must look: a white box, going on for miles in every direction. Hates the way they smell, too sanitary, too clean, like too many chemicals and too much plastic. Hates the nurses and doctors, all fake smiles and feigned optimism and soft assurances. Hates it. Hates it all.

But he sprints in the door of the ER without even bothering to park his car, shoving past the sliding door, which seems intent on moving at a snail’s pace. Finally, he breaks free of the damn thing and runs up to the first desk he spots, to a stodgy nurse who narrows her eyes at him and flinches, slightly. He knows why, knows he must look a sight; he hasn’t been showering as often as he should, and his beard is bushier, hair and eyes wild. He must look like a lunatic. He feels like one – that’s for damn sure.

“A patient. I need to – you got a patient.” His words come out in bursts, hardly intelligible. “Laurel. Laurel Castillo – I gotta-”

“Sir, calm down-” The woman stands up, placing a hand on his arm, looking him up and down. “Are you injured, sir?”

He tears his arm away, viciously. People are staring. He doesn’t care. “No I’m not fuckin’ injured! Laurel Castillo. Where is she – I… I need to see her-”

“Are you family?”

_Ex-boyfriend_ , is the truth. “Boyfriend,” is what he blurts out, breathless.

The woman takes a seat at her computer and types for a moment, impossibly slow, her long red press-on nails clicking on the keyboard. Finally, she looks up at him, sighs, and rises to stand, circling around the desk.

“She’s in the ICU. Just got out of surgery an hour ago. I’ll take you to her.”

He follows, numbly, down the hellish white halls past the hellish white rooms and doctors in hellish white lab coats with clipboards. His head is spinning, brain unable to process so much brightness at once. He keeps pressing the nurse for information on her, how she’s doing, _please, you gotta tell me if she’s gonna make it_ , but she deflects each time, telling him the doctor will keep him up to date and have exact details on her prognosis. He follows, and the walk feels endless, like the hallway continually elongates with every step he takes, absorbing him into the walls, until finally they reach a room on the right and the nurse leads him inside.

And then he sees her.

She’s bruised and battered and cut up all over, lying in the bed, hooked up to too many machines to count. A ventilator, for one – he knows the name of that. IV’s, jammed in her veins, pumping her full of God knows how many drugs. A blood pressure monitor, clipped on her index finger. Some kind of brace on her neck, keeping her still. Other ones, too. Things sticking out of her head and body and all over, so many that they swallow her up, make her look less than human, make her body barely visible. There’s a bandage on her head, a cast on her arm, something he thinks that might be a cast around her middle. She’s in a blue hospital gown, covered by a sheet. The room is so freezing cold that he wonders if it’s enough to keep her warm, then realizes quickly that doesn’t matter.

Because her eyes are closed. Arms limp. He can’t see her chest rising and falling from across the room, with everything she’s hooked up to. She might as well be dead for all he knows, and he’s already too late, and he feels like he’s watching himself approach her from the outside, like watching another man, watching some fucked-up horrific movie of his own life. He barely even notices Bonnie, who’d been sitting in a chair near the doorway, and who stands as soon as he enters, eyes bloodshot, just as sloppily dressed as he is. The instant he does, though, he meets her eyes, and fights the urge to collapse into her arms, sob like a child.

“Frank…” Her voice is low, strained. She moves in to hug him, offer what little comfort she can, but when he doesn’t do the same she lets her arms fall down to her sides, backing off. “They, um… They called me first. The hospital. I guess I was her emergency contact in her phone. I don’t know why. Probably used to be you, but after…”

She stops. Notices he isn’t listening, clearly doesn’t give a fuck, and sighs. “It’s good you’re here.”

“Is she-” He has to pause for a moment, to hold the tattered pieces of himself together, prevent himself from falling apart like a blubbering fool when really it’s all he wants to do. He’s a dam about to spill over its edges, water seeping out of his cracks. His eyes burn with tears, jaw clenched so tight it aches. “Is she gonna-”

“They don’t know yet,” Bonnie answers, softly, and lowers her eyes. “It was bad. She hit a tree going almost eighty miles an hour. Wrapped the car around it. The doctor said she has five broken ribs. One of them punctured her lung. One of her arms is broken, bad, and she fractured her skull. They’ve been… running scans. There’s swelling in her brain. She has severe head trauma. They don’t know what part she hurt yet, exactly, but… She’s unresponsive. And there’s a chance she might never wake up.” Another pause. “And they said that even if she does, she might not be able to talk, or… move every part of her body. She might not be the same, Frank. Ever.”

Again, he can pick up on only fragments of what Bonnie is saying. _There’s a chance she might never wake up_. She might never wake up. He might never see those bright eyes again, see her smile, hear her laugh. All Frank wants, right then – and he wants this so desperately that he can’t breathe – is to hear the sound of her voice, that soft, lilting, beautiful sound. He wants it so desperately, and he can’t have it, maybe never will be able to again.

She might never wake up. This may be all of her he ever gets to see again, all he gets to come back to: this broken, bloodied, lifeless body. Not her. Not _Laurel._ This is not Laurel. Laurel is somewhere else, and this is the empty vessel she inhabits, and she’ll be back soon. She has to.

If there’s a good and merciful God like everyone loves to say there is, she will.

Bonnie is saying something else, something about calling her parents, that she did – or maybe that she’s going to. He nods again without comprehending her words, and slowly, cautiously, in a bleary, trance-like state, makes his way over to the bed, taking a seat at Laurel’s side, but doesn’t touch her; he doesn’t want to fuck up one of the machines, or break her, or hurt her even worse, though he know that doesn’t make much sense. He can see her chest rising and falling, now, even if she’s swallowed up by all manner of machines and tubes. He can see her breathing. Might just be because of the machine breathing for her, taking the place of her lungs. But she’s breathing.

That’s all he’s got. He’ll hold onto that; the tiny, ever so faint _inhale exhale_. He has nothing, otherwise.

She’s dead, otherwise.

“Jesus,” he breathes, shaking his head, eyes locked on her face, on her lip, cracked open and bloody. He gulps, and he can feel the tears on his cheeks now, and he doesn’t give one single solitary fuck, can see only Laurel, lying still as a corpse. Gradually the beeping of one of the countless machines fades into his consciousness, and it takes him a moment but eventually he realizes it’s her heartbeat. “Jesus, Bon, how… How the hell’d this happen?”

Bonnie folds her arms. “They don’t know. They don’t know why she was going so fast… She was almost an hour outside of the city when they found her; they have no clue where she was headed, either.”

“Lookin’ for me,” he says, and it makes little to no sense, maybe, nothing makes sense, but he says it anyway. “Maybe she was… Fuck, I never should’ve left. I shoulda-”

“Hey,” Bonnie soothes, taking a step forward. “You don’t know she was looking for you. She didn’t know where you were. Nobody did. It wouldn’t have made sense for her to go looking.”

She’s right. Frank deflates a little, bows his head, sucks in a breath to steady himself. “Yeah. You’re right.”

They’re silent, for what must be the longest moment in the world, and all he can hear is the heartbeat monitor beeping steadily, and for a while he watches the green sine-wave trace up and down on the screen, comforted by that irrefutable sign of life. The sun is just starting to come up outside, golden rays peeking through the blinds and dancing on Laurel’s face, but she doesn’t look peaceful, he thinks. He used to watch her sleep for hours and he remembers how her features had looked: relaxed, serene – not like this, not bloody and bruised. She doesn’t look peaceful; she looks fitful, caught in some sort of nightmare, same as him. He wonders where her mind is, and looks at the machines and sees all sorts of numbers and lines and letters he can’t make sense of, and wonders what they mean.

He doesn’t know how the human brain works. He doesn’t have the faintest clue; he’s not some damn doctor, or neurosurgeon, or whatever. But he wonders if the machines can tell, can see if she’s thinking, if there’re little sparks jumping around in her synapses, if she’s dreaming, if somewhere in some distant dark abyss her consciousness, her sense of _self_ , is still swimming around. Still there somewhere, buried deep, trapped by the cage of her body.

Across the room, Bonnie breaks the silence by clearing her throat and reaching for her purse. “I’ll, um… I’ll leave you guys alone.”

Frank doesn’t say anything, and after a minute, she goes, closing the door behind her. Finally, he dares to reach out and rest his hand over Laurel’s, so gently his touch is nothing but a whisper, and he hopes she can feel it. He’d pray she could, if he were a godly man, but he doesn’t, and he isn’t. If there’s a God he’s sure as hell already forsaken him, and doesn’t want to hear a peep from him – but Laurel does.

So he talks to her. It’s all he can do.

“Hey,” he croaks, voice thick with tears, forcing a smile though he knows it doesn’t matter. “I, uh… I’m back. Sooner ‘n I thought. I’m here. I’m not leavin’ again. I was… I was so stupid, for leavin’ at all, Laurel. I never shoulda. And I know… Look, I know we’re done, for good, and you don’t love me, and I get that, but I just…” His throat seizes up again, and he forces it back open with a swallow. His vision is blurred by tears, and blinking them away does no good, only makes them come faster. “I can’t lose you, okay? I was gonna try to be okay with it, not bein’ with you. But I can’t… like this, forever, I can’t…”

He thinks he may be sobbing outright, but isn’t sure; he’s not entirely cognizant of what he’s doing, what he’s saying, or even where he is. The words spill out of him, and he knows he looks like a sniveling mess and he doesn’t care, has to say this, has to talk to her. She must be able to hear him. She _must_. Fuck the doctors, fuck _unresponsive_ , fuck _might never wake up._

They don’t know shit. They don’t know Laurel.

“You’re gonna go on. Gonna wake up. Do so much… so much good. You’re gonna change the entire goddamn world, I just know it, and I know you can hear me. I know you can. You gotta.” He squeezes his eyes shut, taking her hand and raising it to his lips and holding it there, cherishing the warmth of her skin, committing each crease in her fingers to memory. “I love you. I love you so much. Please just… don’t go. I’ll stay here with you. I won’t leave, not for a minute. You just gotta promise you won’t go. I’ll stay.” He sniffs, shaking his head. “I’ll stay if you do, Laurel, I promise.”

So he does. And she makes it through the night, against all odds.

She holds up her end of the bargain, and stays with him too.

 

~

 

The doctors keep using long, complicated medical terms and phrases he doesn’t understand whenever they give him updates on her condition, but Frank gets the gist of it, even dumb and distraught as he is. Severe head trauma. Likely brain damage. Coma. She has swelling in her brain too, but they’re keeping it down and monitoring it. Minor hemorrhaging, also in her brain. Her brain is really, royally fucked. But her lung is stable. Her bones will heal.

Frank doesn’t need them to tell him that; he knows you can heal a broken bone. A broken mind is a whole other story.

They keep running tests. CT scans and MRI’s and poring over pictures that just look like a bunch of blue and black squiggles and nonsense to Frank. They don’t mean shit to him. She still won’t wake up. He doesn’t care what’ll happen after she does, what she’ll be like, if she’ll be able to talk or walk or feed herself or have any reasonable grasp on her motor skills – he doesn’t care. If he could just have her back, see her open those eyes of hers… It’s all he needs. The rest of those things are just luxuries. Added bonuses.

He just needs her awake. Laurel. His girl. His fucking _everything_. He’ll worry about the rest, later.

Her parents show up an hour after sunrise, having flown up from Florida. He knows Laurel has always had a more than slightly contemptuous relationship with them, but her mother breaks down as soon as she sees her, and her father just stares at her like someone has plunged a knife into his chest, and doesn’t say anything, just stands there, stares blankly. It’s possibly the worst way to meet the parents in recorded history, but he stands, shakes their hands anyway, lets her mother squeeze him so tight it hurts and thank him for being there and cry until her mascara stains the shoulder of his sweater.

The day creeps by. Hours morph into eternities, minutes into ages that drag out and may as well be centuries. It feels like hell, and he’s exhausted and hasn’t slept or eaten, and still won’t budge from the chair beside her bed. He made a promise to Laurel, said he’d stay if she did, and she’s staying, so far – so he will, too. He stays, silent as a sentinel, watching her so closely that by the end of the day he has every inch of her imprinted into his mind: from length of the gash on her forehead to the exact point in which the IV enters her left wrist.

She’ll wake up. Has to. It’s unfathomable that she won’t. Frank could have survived being apart from her, after she’d ended things, he really could have – but he sure as hell won’t be able to survive knowing Laurel isn’t at least out there somewhere in the world, living and breathing and doing so much good.

She’ll wake up. She will.

The day passes, bleeds into the next like a watercolor. She doesn’t as much as stir. Bonnie pops in and out, fretting over him, bringing him shitty food from the cafeteria that he makes himself choke down just so he can retain at least the most basic human functions and not pass out. Her parents leave at night to sleep at a hotel nearby. He stays then, too. The few times he manages to fall asleep, he dozes with his head resting on his arms on the bed, next to her legs. The beeping of her heartbeat, mixed with the mechanical sounds of the ventilator as it breathes for her, is his lullaby.

The rest of the kids plus Oliver come to visit on that second day, and flowers aren’t allowed in the ICU so they show up empty-handed, their lips pressed into grave lines, looking like they don’t know what to do with themselves and eyeing him like a man risen from the dead. The Puppy is the only one who dares to get close; he has tears in his eyes, and walks over and brushes his fingers gently over Laurel’s hand, and asks him, timidly, if she’s going to make it.

“Yeah,” is all Frank chokes out, still with certainty. “Yeah. ‘Course she’s gonna make it.”

That’s not what the doctors are saying. They seem worried about her lack of brain activity, the severity of her coma; whenever they’re around him they all try to toe the fine line between optimism and false hope, telling him to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

Fuck them. All of them. He tells them that, feral as a dog. Spooks them and sends them running.

They don’t know Laurel Castillo, don’t know how strong she is, don't know what she's been through, how she has the strength of armies contained in her and always has. Their prognoses don’t mean anything to him – her parents may buy it, but he doesn’t. He only believes in her. He knows her. Laurel does not give up. Laurel is the strongest person he’s ever known. Laurel _fights_ , so he tells her he loves her over and over, whispers it against her skin, the only prayer he knows.

Hopes maybe that’ll help her fight harder.

 

~

 

On the fifth day since the accident, Bonnie and Laurel’s mother finally join forces and persuade him to go home, shower and change and maybe sleep – though by their tone he can tell the sleeping part is mostly optional. He doesn’t blame them; he’s starting to reek, bad. He’d reeked already, living in that shithole of a motel, subsisting off beer, pizza, and self-pity.

So he goes home to his apartment, and does the things they tell him to robotically, not because he wants to but because he knows he has to. He’s thankful, at least, that he’d paid his rent several months in advance, because when he returns all his stuff is still there, everything where it should be. His bed is still just as unmade as he’d left it. If he tried hard enough, he thinks he might even be able to smell Laurel on his sheets.

He does a fair amount of crying in the hour or so it takes him to shower and dress. He’s never been prone to cry, or even prone to show any emotion at all, but it’s like some stop has been pulled and everything is flowing out at once, and he doesn’t know how to make it all quit, plug it back up. He cries in the shower, sobs, and gives the tile wall one very firm pounding with his fist before he decides that it hurts too much, and there’s no sense in fucking up his hands.

Laurel wouldn’t want him to do that, anyway. That thought and that thought alone stills him.

He gets ice for his knuckles, changes into clean jeans and a clean black shirt, and drives back. He makes his way down that same white hallway that, by now, he knows every in and out of, and stops at Laurel’s room, turning the doorknob, stepping inside.

When he does, all he finds is an empty bed, the sheets folded neatly where she used to rest.

Any and every trace of Laurel is gone. _She’s_ gone.

No. _No no no no no_.

He storms out into the hallway, all but assaults the first nurse he sees; young, petite, blond, and terrified of him. “Laurel. Castillo. She was – she was just in that room, where the hell… Where is she-”

“I-I don’t know,” she stutters, blue eyes wide. “I’m sorry, sir-”

It’s like hearing about the accident all over again; that kind of all-consuming panic that sucks him under and slams into his chest and drowns him. He stumbles away from the woman, mouth moving dumbly, not having a clue what to say. She’s dead. Must be dead. Why else would her room be empty, her parents gone? He’d left – that must be what it was. He’d left, and he’d told her he’d stay, and she’d died with him gone.

Frank knows full well how irrational that sounds. But it makes total sense to him, in his sorry state, and he’s about to go bolting for the front desk when suddenly-

“Frank.”

Her father’s voice, deep and firm, sounds out behind him, startling him. The other man looks smaller than he had when he’d first arrived, his hair a tad greyer, his blue suit slumped and winkled and in need of ironing. He’s holding a plastic cup of water, and has bags under his eyes that Frank is sure are mirrored on his own face, but he isn’t crying, doesn’t look distraught, and from that he can deduce that Laurel must not be dead.

Still, he sucks in a breath, stepping towards him. “Where…? Where’d she-”

“They moved her to another wing. For… longer-term care,” he tells him, unsmiling.

Frank feels weak enough to fall to his knees, right then, but he catches himself and snaps back to himself as the words register. _Longer-term care_. It sounds like a good thing, at least, and he manages a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, trying not to sway on his feet.

“That’s, uh… that’s good, right?” Frank asks, full of hope. “Means she’s gettin’ better.”

Laurel’s father – _Jorge_ , he remembers vaguely, his name is Jorge, he should call him that, maybe – pauses. It’s a long pause; an ominous one, before finally he sighs and drags his eyes up to meet his like they’re the heaviest weights in the world.

“It means the doctors think she might be here a while. That’s all.”

So, not better. Worse, potentially – or the same. She isn’t better, she isn’t worse; she’s just _the same_.

Okay. That’s okay. He can deal with the same.

“In a few days,” her father’s voice breaks into his reverie, an air of profound sorrow hanging over him, “they say she should be able to breathe on her own again. So that’s something.”

Frank nods. The brief upward and downward shaking of his head is the only kind of movement he can muster, in that instant; his limbs are all fuzzy and numb and full of pins-and-needles sensations otherwise, like they’ve fallen asleep, his body shutting down piecemeal and giving into its own exhaustion. After a moment, the older man reaches out and places a firm hand on his shoulder, pressing his lips into a line in something that Frank thinks is maybe supposed to be a smile, a show of solidarity.

“Thank you for staying with her. Really. You’re a good man.” A pause. His hand drops down. Again, he sighs, this time more wearily. “After she wakes up, if she wakes up, we’re going to take her home with us. She needs to be at home for a while, especially if she has… long-lasting problems. We won’t burden you with that.”

_Burden._ Frank shoots him a look of genuine bewilderment.

“She wouldn’t be a burden,” he says, shaking his head, brow furrowed, unsure how anyone could ever think of Laurel that way. “She’d never… She’d never be a burden, I-”

“I know that. And I believe you. But if it’s as bad as the doctors say it could be-”

“It’s not gonna be,” he raises his voice, harsher than he’d intended. “They… they don’t know what the hell they’re talkin’ about, okay? They don’t know her like I do. She’s gonna be fine. She’s gotta.”

For a second, something akin to pity flashes behind her father’s eyes, eyes that match Laurel’s almost identically. He looks almost sorry for him, sorry that he’s such a deluded, optimistic fool, but the look is there and gone before he can blink, before Frank has the chance to read much into it.  

“So she will be,” Mr. Castillo tells him, and pats him on the shoulder one last time, before turning, his tall, dark figure slinking down the hallway and disappearing around the corner.

 

~

 

On the sixth day, Annalise Keating comes calling.

He hears the familiar, rhythmic clacking of her heels on the tile floor before he sees her, and when he looks up, there she is in the doorway, formidable as ever in a forest green dress. Flowers are allowed now, in this wing, and she has some; an arrangement of cheerful sunflowers and yellow chrysanthemums and daisies, in a braided wicker basket. They belie the look on her face – which is anything but cheerful, or happy, or even remotely content. _Glowering_ , is the word that comes to mind. Withering.

Then he remembers: she hates him, for Sam, for Lila, for the bug and the hotel room and the baby. Somehow he’d forgotten, these past few days, just what it was that sent him running in the first place, but it comes rushing back the instant their eyes lock, and he shrinks a good three inches before her, clutching Laurel’s hand just a bit tighter, for any courage she can give him. It’s a while before Annalise speaks, and her silence is more unnerving than any words could ever be, as she makes her way over to a table in the corner and sets the flowers there, then folds her arms, turning to look at him.

“I thought you might be here,” she says, and even those words have bite to them. They’re clipped. Short. Terse.

Frank shrinks a bit more. “Yeah, uh… Bon called me, when she found out.”

“And you came running right back, didn’t you?” Annalise walks slowly across the room, then comes to a stop by the door. “Running back to your girlfriend.”

“Annalise…”

“You shouldn’t have.” She raises her chin, scowling down at him. “You should’ve stayed wherever you went like the coward you are. We both know she's better off without you.”

He winces, at her words. They cut like daggers; her words are daggers, her gaze is daggers, everything about her is daggers, and all of it is agonizing.

“Annalise, please, don’t…” _Please don’t do this. Not now, at least._

Silence. Annalise lets out a breath, and folds her arms, glancing over at Laurel. “How is she?”

“Not wakin’ up,” is the only answer he can come up with. “Docs don’t know if she ever will. It was bad, the accident, it was…”

“Yes. I’m familiar with bad car accidents.”

The car accident. Her baby. The blood on his hands. He feels sick, bile rising hot in his throat. He knows he deserves this, too, Annalise’s scorn and her hatred and every cruel word she could possibly throw at him, and it makes him infinitely sicker.

“I’m… Look, I’m sorry, Annalise, I-”

“You think you’re a good person, still. Deep down. I know you do,” she cuts him off, fierce, eyes flinty. “You’re a broken man and you think her love will redeem you like every bad cliché in the book. But it won’t. You’re a monster. Worse than Sam ever was.” She pauses, and again looks at the unmoving Laurel. “Maybe she’s better off dead than living in this world anyway.”

She leaves him, with that, her words hanging over them, bouncing around the insides of his skull like echoes inside a canyon. He squeezes Laurel’s hand even tighter, then reminds himself to loosen his grip, that he isn’t supposed to cause her any kind of distress, or disturb any of the thousand and one machines she’s hooked up to.

The words trouble him, but not for one single solitary moment does he consider that they might be true. Laurel is not better off dead than living in this world. She might be better off without him, sure – that much is certain, but Laurel is a piece of this world that it needs, a little seed of good amongst all the evil and depravity, planted in rocky soil but destined to thrive. Something pure. This world needs Laurel.

It doesn’t take Frank long to realize he’s projecting his own desires onto the world, though, and deluding himself again. The world doesn’t need Laurel. Not really, he supposes; she’s just another person, just as tiny and inconsequential as he is, in the grand scheme of things.

He needs Laurel. He does. _He_.

 

~

 

On the seventh day, she shows signs of more brain activity.

Frank’s starting to find this way of keeping time reminiscent of the creation story, a bit. _And on the seventh day, the Lord created brain activity. And He was pleased._  

And so is Frank.

The doctors show him the pictures. There’s a little muted rainbow of reds and oranges and yellows and greens in her brain where there wasn’t one before, where it had just been nearly one uniform, somber shade of blue. She still isn’t responding to words, or touches, or anything, but her vitals are stable, she’s off the ventilator, breathing on her own, and she has brain activity.

It’s something. It’s progress.

_And on the last day, the Lord created Laurel Castillo. And she was beautiful; a girl and a goddess._

_And He was pleased._

~

 

The ninth day is when it happens.

He’s alone with her. Her parents left to eat in the cafeteria half an hour ago, both needing an escape from the cramped little room, all too-tiny cream-colored walls and too-small windows, and drowning in chipper get-well-soon cards and flower arrangements. He’s sitting back in his chair, staring morosely down into a bag of Doritos, the blue kind, before tossing it away in the trashcan by the door; he’s been eating his way through practically the entire vending machine down the hall, supplementing that diet with the things Bonnie brings from time to time.

It’s so small and slight he barely notices at first.

A twitch passes through her. Her fingers lift up, very slowly, feeling around on the bed beneath them, as if trying to discern where she is. He finally notices it when her nose wrinkles, and his heart stops as he watches her, as he takes a seat and stares, not sure what it is, what’s going on, what caused it, but knowing that it’s her. She’s moving.

She’s _moving_.

It’s tiny, so slight it looks almost involuntary and may very well be, but it’s there. They said she might never move again and she’s moving, proving them wrong with every inch-worm creeping of her fingers, just like he’d known she would.

“Laurel?” His voice is almost a whisper. He can’t believe it, thinks maybe he’s so sleep-deprived and dehydrated that he’s hallucinating. When he reaches out, takes her hand, feels her little fingers moving around against his skin, he knows he isn’t. “Laurel? Hey. Can you hear me? Can you…”

He probably needs to get the doctor, he realizes, so Frank bolts up out of his chair and does just that, shouting down the hallway; _she’s wakin’ up, get in here, she’s wakin’ up!_ then ducking back inside the room and retaking his place at her side like he’s anchored there. Watching. Waiting. He doesn’t expect Laurel to surge forward with a gasp and suddenly be awake and alert – it’ll take time, maybe. Time for her brain to wake up, boot back into a state of awareness; coming awake all at once might be too much for her.

She’ll go as slow as she needs. _Slow and steady_. He knows that. He’ll wait.

Laurel makes a sound, just then. Not a hum or a squeak but something in between; a wince. She’s probably in enough pain to just about kill her – or maybe not, because he’s seen the nurses come in and out with a hell of a lot of morphine. He’s vaguely aware of the doctor and a pair of nurses standing in the doorway, hanging back, but he doesn’t care, barely sees them.

He talks to her, again. Soft. Gentle urging.

“That’s good,” he tells her. “You’re movin’, that’s… that’s real good, keep doing that. I know you can hear me, you gotta… Keep going if you can hear me, Laurel. I’m gonna stay right here, okay?”

They do. Her fingers keep moving. Her nose twitches again. She makes another sound, and shifts her head. There’s a tube up her nose and a brace around her neck and all sorts of machines sticking in and out of her, and she’s moving. She hears him. Could be she even recognizes his voice.

It’s fifteen minutes of these tiny, barely perceptible movements before her eyes flutter open.

Her parents are back, by then. They’re watching her like they’ve never seen anything so captivating, and the doctor and nurses aren’t making any moves, are letting her come to as gradually as she needs. Frank keeps talking to her, hoping his voice will give her something to follow up and out of the darkness; a lighthouse, to guide her, and when those eyes open at last – just little slits at first, overwhelmed by the brightness surrounding them – Frank’s heart stops, and twists itself up as if it’s trying to wring itself out like an old wet rag and kill him.

Those eyes. He can’t breathe. Her eyes flit around the room, eyelids slowly peeling all the way back, revealing blue and grey irises with all sorts of intricate patterns and lines and curly-cues, and big dark pupils. Opal eyes. He’d never thought eyes could be so beautiful. Never thought any sight could be so beautiful.

“Laurel?” he says her name through the lump in his throat, and forces a smile, and reaches out very very slowly to caress her cheek, though he thinks for a second that maybe he shouldn’t. “Hey. Laurel, can you-”

As soon as his hand draws close to her face, however, she flinches ever so slightly, as much as one can flinch in a neck brace. Confusion bleeds into those eyes of hers, and her irises go dim and grey, as if someone has poked a hole in them and let all the color leak out. When she looks over at him, it’s a blank look she gives. No flicker of recognition, no spark. No nothing, just a stare – like she’s never seen him before in her life. Like he’s a stranger to her.

“Who’re you?” she croaks, and the world around him goes to pieces.   


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, it’s not actually 2016 in the show’s timeline currently. But?? I don’t really care. We're rolling with it. 
> 
> I wanted to get this out before the midseason finale tonight comes and inevitably fucks everything up, so. Enjoy!!! And here's hoping tonight goes well.

Upon waking she knows only three things for sure.

Two of them are things she knows for sure she does _not_ know.

One – she doesn’t know where she is. She almost doesn’t know her own name, but she keeps hearing a name – _Laurel, Laurel_ – and so it comes back to her quick enough. Laurel. That’s her name. First name: Laurel. Last name: Castillo.

Mark that down as another thing she knows for sure.

Two – she doesn’t know why she’s here. It looks like a hospital, so it probably is one. But she isn’t sure; her brain is foggy, her whole body feels abnormally heavy, and she can’t move, can’t crane her neck to take in her surroundings. Her slumber had felt deeper than slumber should be. There’s something on her neck. Wires and tubes poking out of her everywhere. A cast on her arm. Her head feels heavy, an ache and pressure brewing behind her eyes.

Three – there’s a man next to her, one she’s never seen before. Bearded. Older than her. Piercing bright blue eyes that are bloodshot and puffy, and dark hair. There’s a smile on his face. Tears in his eyes. He looks overjoyed, swallowing thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing heavily in his throat.

“Laurel?” he says. His voice is deep, strained. “Hey. Laurel, can you-”

He reaches out to touch her, and she recoils, staring at him with a scowl.

“Who’re you?” she manages to ask, though it takes every bit of energy in her to move the muscles that open her mouth, then put together letters to form coherent words on her tongue, which feels heavy too, almost cottony.

There’s a long pause. A palpable heaviness in the air. Laurel can only think in fragments, short and clipped and fleeting. There’s an IV in her arm, pumping her full of something; she feels it flowing steadily into her veins, wonders for a flicker of a second what it is. She can feel all of her limbs – that’s something. But she’s exhausted, in a way that isn’t from a lack of sleep, in a way that is buried deep in her bones, deep in her skull. Her head. Something’s wrong with her head. There’s a bandage wrapped around it, but that’s not it.

Inside. Something else.

The man is still looking at her. His smile falters, shrivels up and dies and gives way to a look of uncertainty. When she flinches he looks crestfallen, and slowly lowers his hand, drawing away from her, retreating back into himself. She’s not sure she’s ever seen anyone look so hurt before in her life.

She tries to feel bad. She can’t feel anything but scared.

“It’s me,” he says, tries to force another smile, shaking his head. “Don’t you… You know me, Laurel.”

Someone rushes towards her, on the other side of her bed. “Laurel, honey, oh my god…”

Her mother. Behind her is her father. Normally she’d be far from happy to see them, but here, in this unfamiliar place, with this stranger next to her, talking to her like he knows her, and the doctor and nurses lingering in the back of the room, and all the white, all the plastic, all the deafening, screeching beeping… It all scares the hell out of her. She clings to the only familiar faces there, holding on for dear life.

_What is this. Where am I. What happened._

Her thoughts are firing in all directions, jumbled like mismatched puzzle pieces. When she tries to remember what might have brought her here there’re giant gaping holes where her memory should be, blocking her access, locking her out. There’s just…

Nothing.

There’s nothing, where yesterday and the day before and the day before that should be, in the slots of memory they should occupy. They’re gone. Erased. She knows who she is. Knows her parents.

She doesn’t know much beyond that.

“Mom,” she murmurs, feeling tears rush in a hot deluge to her eyes. “Mom, what’s…? What’s going on?”

A doctor comes to stand by her side then, tall and lanky and towering over her, and with her distorted vision he looks almost cartoonish, like he’d make some kind of comical _boinging_ sound while walking. If she could laugh, she would, but instead she just stares.

“Miss Castillo. I’m Doctor Nelson. You were in a car accident. You suffered a traumatic brain injury. You’ve been in a coma for nine days. I need to ask you a few questions, is that all right?”

It’s not. She feels small and scared and just wants to hide under the sheets and cower, but she tells him yes anyway, and he steps in front of the man from before, shielding him from view. _It’s me. Don’t you know me, Laurel?_

_Who are you. Who are you. Who ARE you. WHO ARE YOU._

“Now, do you remember being in the accident?”

She pauses. Tries to summon some memory from the depths of her subconscious, diving down as far as she can reach, and comes up empty-handed. It’s funny. Strange. Like she _should_ be able to remember but some plug has been yanked out of some internal socket, and she’s been disconnected, and every thought slips through her fingers, as fine as sand. She feels like everything inside her head is malfunctioning. Short-circuiting.

“No.”

A wave of pain crashes into her head, slams into it. Her skull is boiling on the inside, now. There’s a hurricane behind her eyes and under her skin. It’s too bright in here. There isn’t one single nerve ending in her body that isn’t screaming in pain.  

“What is the last thing you remember?”

Laurel thinks, harder this time, then sucks in a breath. “I, uh… I was home, I was getting ready to leave. For law school. Middleton. I was gonna go to law school. It was… summer. July.”

A hush falls over the room, long and devastating. The doctor looks grim, and turns to her mother, who bends down and takes her hand and gives it a firm squeeze.

“That was… that was a year ago, honey. You’re about to _finish_ your first year at Middleton.”

“No, I’m… I haven’t even gotten to Philadelphia yet, I-” Her breathing picks up, panic hurtling towards her like a freight train on the tracks, all blinding light and blaring whistles and grinding metal. Everything is so bright. _God, someone turn the lights off, please._ “What year is it?”

“2016,” her mother answers.

Wrong. She’s wrong again. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Someone turn off the lights. Dim them. She can’t see.

This is not the world she knew.

“No – it’s… No it’s not,” she breathes, and tries to shake her head and almost screams in agony when she does. She tries to move next, tries to sit up, but the nurses are upon her before she can, holding her down gently, soothing her in measured, cadenced tones. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

The man she doesn’t recognize stands, places a hand on her arm too. “Laurel. Hey, it’s okay. ‘S all okay.”

“Who are you?” she repeats, biting out a weak, muffled sob. “Who are you, I don’t know you-”

“Darling, that’s your boyfriend,” her mother tells her, trying to sound cheerful but really just making her feel like she’s crazy, like she’s in some insane asylum with people all around her wearing too-bright smiles, cooing to her, telling her it’s a year later than it is and that her she’s dating a man she’s never even seen before – she’s gone crazy, that must be it. This isn’t real. Can’t be. “That’s Frank.”

“I don’t know him,” Laurel asserts again, more forcefully. “I don’t know him, I… I don’t know who he is.”

Her father goes to the man, leans in and murmurs something in his ear. The man – Frank, she tells herself, Frank is his name, or so they’re telling her, it might be the truth or might not be – looks like whatever it is kicks him in the gut, kills him, but he nods, and her father steps away. He takes one long look at her, for a moment, as if silently willing her to remember, trying to transmit some unspoken message to her across the room, but it gets lost in translation, the signal dropped.

She’s never been looked at like that before, all that blue-eyed tenderness, all that affection. So intently, with so much love.

_What have I missed. Frank, who are you. What have I MISSED tell me PLEASE._

He walks out the door, not long after, his gait slow and ambling and all hunched over. The nurses are doing something, now. Fiddling with her IV, putting something else into it. Her mother is shushing her. They’re holding her down. She’s going crazy. Maybe _gone_ crazy, in the past tense, living in a world she doesn’t belong in; a stranger in a strange land.

She feels the drug rush cool into her veins, disperse into her bloodstream and absorb itself into her, and she can’t do anything to stop it. There’s darkness again before she knows it, encroaching inexorably in from all angles. This is what they do to people who’ve lost it: drug them. Keep them tame and docile.

_Frank, who are you. Who are you. Who am I. WHO AM I._

The darkness is familiar when it hits. Warm. It drags her down, sucks her under in waves, and she lets it. It’s familiar.

At least she knows it’s real.

 

~

 

She drifts in and out of consciousness lazily, sloshing around like a ship on the sea, pulled to and fro by the tide.

She has no idea how long she does it for. Might be hours. Might be days. Might be weeks, though maybe _weeks_ is an exaggeration. She doesn’t have a solid grasp on time, nor does she have a solid grasp on just about anything else in the world. It all floats out of reach, evades her before she can pin anything down.

The visage of the man they’d called Frank haunts her dreams, floats before her eyes as she sleeps, so heartbroken, so shattered, repeating one singular question, _Don’t you know me, Laurel? Don’t you know me, Laurel?_ And she tries to, thinks so hard her brain aches, trying to recall even the briefest flash of him in the time before, but again and again there’s nothing. She doesn’t know where he is. He hasn’t been back in to see her as far as she knows, and her parents haven’t mentioned him. She wonders where he is. Who he is.

What he’d meant to her, in that other life.

_Amnesia,_ the doctor says, as if she doesn’t already know. Acute memory loss, of at least the past year, but possibly more. She might regain her memories one day; gradually, over time. But it’s entirely plausible she never will, and they’ll be lost to her forever, sucked down the whirlpool of her mind and held captive by some invisible force. A whole year of her life – gone. Wiped clean.

Most days she wants to scream in frustration and beat her head against the wall, until maybe she blacks out, until she jostles something loose in there and it floats to the surface and she can _feel_ again. She doesn’t feel like herself. She feels less than human; some creature, some scared, erratic little child her parents and everyone else tiptoes around. She’s been robbed, of the worst thing possible; of herself, who she is and used to be. And she’s so _angry_ about it all the time, every minute of every day, and she’s not used to being angry, can’t ever remember having a temper, but even the tiniest inconveniences set her off, make her snap.

She’s been robbed of herself. She does not recognize this girl she’s become. The hands in front of her face no longer look like her own; they feel like foreign objects, cold, robotic extensions of someone else’s body, and when they give her a mirror and let her look at her reflection, she sees her face – thinner, a little gaunt, eyes sunken in – and knows it’s hers. And feels nothing. Just feels angry.

At least she can feel something.

_Frank, who are you. Where are you. Who are you. Who am I. WHO AM I._

After a while, two weeks or so, or maybe less, they start weaning her off the meds. The neck brace comes off, and the uncomfortable tube comes out of her nose. They even let her try to sit up, though it hurts and her broken ribs scream in protest, and she doesn’t do it for long. The doctors seem optimistic about her prognosis. They think she’s improving.

Good. At least somebody does.

So. The neck brace comes off. The tube comes out. The amount of machines on her and in her and around her is cut by at least half, giving her more freedom to move. All milestones that should feel like progress because they _are_ , but milestones that she doesn’t care about, not even a little, not so long as they don’t help her remember.

It’s around that time that she asks for Frank again.

Her mother is there, and she’s sitting up watching TV in her room when she does: blurts it out of nowhere, not knowing why the thought comes to her, but suddenly it’s all she can think about, all-consuming and overwhelming. Seeing Frank. She needs to. Doesn’t know why; she can’t explain it. She can’t explain most of her impulses, these days, but she needs to see him.

“I want to see him,” she remarks, hollowly, out of nowhere. Her voice is low, eyes unfocused, even as she points them at the screen.

Beside her, in the chair next to her bed, her mother frowns, deepening the wrinkles in her face. “Who, dear?”

“Frank.” A pause. “I want to see him. Can you… can you call him?”

She hesitates. For a moment Laurel thinks she’s going to say no, but then a smile creeps onto her face, and she nods, reaching for her phone.

“He’s been calling your father, every single day. He’ll be happy to hear from you, sweetheart.”

Her mother goes, and she turns her attention back to the television, watching the game show with blank eyes as some blonde contestant screams about winning a fantastic, four-day, all expenses paid trip to Barbados. It isn’t long before it starts to irritate her, though, before the screaming makes her ears ring and gives her a splitting headache, and she switches it off, sitting there in the silence instead. Staring at the same space on the wall she always does, just to the right of the window, where there’s a tiny little chip in the paint that exposes the cinderblock wall beneath, oddly mesmerized. Thinking about the man who’d called himself Frank, her so-called boyfriend; the man who’d looked at her with all the love in the world while all she’d looked at him with was confusion and fear and nothingness.

She doesn’t know this Frank. But this Frank knows her, and she’s so sick of the doctors and her parents being around all the time that she’s all but ready to try to off them all with the nearest sharp object she can get her hands on.   

She doesn’t know this Frank, but this Frank knows her. He can help her know herself, again.

Laurel doesn’t know how she knows. Just that she does.


	4. Chapter 4

After two weeks of not seeing her, the call from Laurel’s mother might as well be a call straight from the good Lord himself, on a direct line from heaven to earth.

“She asked for you, today. Said she wants to see you. She’s better; enough to have visitors, I think.”

The last part stings a little, like he’s just another visitor to march in and out of her room and leave flowers and give a cold, impersonal get-well-soon, like he doesn’t love her so much that it’s fucking eaten him alive not to be able to see her for weeks. Like he hasn’t not been able to sleep at all during those weeks either, consumed by thoughts of her and haunted by the eerie white emptiness of her eyes. Her father had told him to leave that day, told him it was best for _her_ if he left. And he’d done it.

He’d done it. Doesn’t mean it hadn’t carved his heart out and chopped it into a million tiny pieces and stomped on them and fed them to a pack of dogs, though.

_“Frank, maybe it’s best if you leave for today, hombre. We’re not supposed to upset her, and I know how much you care for her, but… I’ll let you know as soon as she’s better, to see you. Just not right now.”_

Amnesia. Acute memory loss. At first he’d thought it might just be temporary confusion, a side effect of the drugs or of the coma, but with daily updates from her father it’s increasingly clear it isn’t. The last thing Laurel honest to God remembers is being at home in Florida a year ago. Her mind is like a hard drive wiped clean, reset.

Which means no murders, in her world. No Sam, no Rebecca, no Sinclair, none of it. No working for Annalise. No meeting him, kissing him, dating him.

No _loving_ him, if she ever did.

And no Lila. No telling her about Lila. Laurel doesn’t even know who Lila Stangard is, and for some reason that really fucking scares him, makes fear burrow into his chest and take up residence like a tumor, because he has no clue what to do with that information, what he’s _supposed_ to do; if looking at it as a twisted sort of second chance is an unimaginably shitty, awful thing for him to do – which, most likely, it is. She doesn’t know what he’s done. Even worse – she doesn’t know what _she’s_ done. She doesn’t know who he is, and the way she’d looked at him, all bleary, blank eyes, no recognition in them, just fear when he’d tried to reach for her…

Frank doesn’t know how to adequately express how much that’d fucking hurt, the unbearable, piercing agony of it, the way it’d made it feel like there was a giant black sinkhole opening up beneath his feet, crumbling the ground and swallowing him whole. He still doesn’t. It still hurts just as bad, but-

But she asked for him, by name. She knows his _name_. She may not know him – but she knows his name, and that’s something, he reminds himself.

That’s progress in itself.

So he dresses – not in a suit, that’d be a bit much, but a simple forest green t-shirt and dark wash jeans. He trims his beard, for the first time since he left almost a month ago, and remembers how Laurel used to tease him relentlessly in the mornings about all his _manscaping_ , about how he’d take longer in the bathroom than she did, and frets at the thought that now she doesn’t have any such recollection. He slicks his hair back, and when he looks at himself in the mirror for the first time, he recognizes the reflection in the glass.

He’d had nothing to live for, back in that motel, after losing Annalise, losing Laurel. But he has something to live for, now; a reason to wake up, the best reason in the world. He knows the man staring back at him because there’s life in his eyes, not bleak hopelessness, not self-pity. He has Laurel, again. Even if her parents seem intent on taking her home, the moment she’s well enough to travel. Even if he’s as good as a stranger to her. Even if he’s the most selfish sonofabitch in the entire world for not walking out of her life right now and letting her forget she ever knew him. She would be better off that way, undoubtedly.

He knows that. He thinks maybe he should, should leave today and never look back and set her free because that’s what you do if you really love somebody, if you know you’re not good for them, you _set them free_. But his own selfishness wins out like it always does as he grabs his keys, leaves his apartment, and all but sprints down to his car, texting Bonnie a brief update on the way.

He knows Bonnie will be skeptical. Probably rightfully so. He’ll deal with that later.

Frank doesn’t stop for flowers, though he thinks maybe he should. But the last time he was there she had enough, and he’s certain the situation has only gotten exponentially worse, and he’s pretty sure there’re no flowers in the world that can say what he really wants to say, anyway; multitudes of words he’s had to bottle up every day, choke down. He considers, briefly, bringing her something else, something that might spark a memory in her, coax her mind into remembering, but decides against that, too. It’s early, and she’s still fragile. He doesn’t want to upset her; seeing him, a total stranger calling himself her boyfriend, will already probably freak her the fuck out, and that’s understandable.

There is a time and a place for all that. Not here. Not right now. So he brings himself and himself alone, making his way down the hallway and stopping at her door, giddy as a schoolboy all over again.

The room is still, when he opens the door. Laurel is alone, sitting up in bed, and the TV is playing some daytime soap opera which she isn’t watching. She’s looking down at her hands, picking what looks like a hangnail idly. The bandage is off her head, the tube out of her nose, the brace off her neck. A bit of color has returned to her cheeks, and though she’s still pale, and the white hospital gown only makes her look paler, she looks…

Like herself. Like Laurel, and he wants to weep all over again, wants to fall to his knees and thank the God he’d thought had forsaken him – because maybe he has forsaken him, but at least he hadn’t forsaken _her_.

She glances up when she hears him enter, but doesn’t greet him. She doesn’t smile, either; she just looks at him, still with those empty white eyes, and takes him in from head to toe, observing him carefully, with the cautious air of an animal trying to decide if its predator is going to attack or not. It makes him shift awkwardly, to be stared at like that, so unnervingly, and he wants to run to her and pull her into his arms but knows he can’t, and he can’t shake how strange that feels, to have to hold back.

So Frank stands there, for a minute, dumbly, like the idiot he is. Then, he grins at her; small, as nonthreatening as he can make it.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Laurel says back, softly. A moment of silence passes, tense and heavy, before she clears her throat and looks over at the chair next to her bed. “You, uh, you can sit.”

He does. He feels too tall and awkward and lumbering, for some reason, but he makes his way over and takes a seat nonetheless. Laurel switches off the television and watches him as he moves, but lowers her eyes quickly as soon as he turns to meet hers. Then, they proceed to sit for another minute in silence.

It’s sufficiently awkward, to say the least.

Finally, she furrows her brow and glances up at him. “So… you’re my boyfriend.”

He smirks, tries to be himself, tries to stop freaking the fuck out, and thankfully manages to mask that internal chaos relatively well. “The one and only.”

She shoots him a look of disbelief. “I – really?”

“Yeah,” he says, amused. “What?”

“Nothing, I just…” She shakes her head and gives a tiny little smile, and actually blushes, a bit. “I’m kinda surprised. You don’t look like the guys I usually date.”

Okay. This is new. It quickly becomes evident he’s not talking at all to the Laurel he’s used to, bold and brash and witty, and he’d been expecting that, or at least some kind of change, but somehow it still catches him off guard. This Laurel is decidedly shyer. More timid and bashful. The quiet one. _Wallflower._ That’s what he’d used to call her.

This is the Laurel he’d known before all the murder and death and deception had hardened her. She has no clue what she’s done, the blood that’s on her hands, and he knows in that instant he’ll never be able to tell her about any of that.

Never be able to ruin her, like all that darkness had ruined her before.  

He shakes the thought away, and makes himself relax. “Yeah? What do the guys you date usually look like?”

“Well, they’re younger. And don’t have beards.”

He grins. “You liked the beard.”

She looks surprised. “Did I?”

“Yeah,” he answers, unable to take his eyes off her. “Do you still?”

Laurel shrugs. Her eyes dance with silent laughter – a good sign, he thinks. “Maybe.”

He leans back in his chair, folding his arms, and gives her a wink, and does everything in his power right then to keep himself from moving forward and kissing her over and over, kissing her breathless, kissing her until she remembers every kiss he’s ever given her before.

“I’ll take it,” is all he says, instead. And he will; he’ll take even the tiniest table scrap she deigns to give him, like a dog sitting patiently at her feet.

A moment of silence passes – not entirely awkward this time, but not entirely comfortable either, given this new, one-sided relationship of theirs. Laurel lowers her eyes, picks at her fingers for a minute, before exhaling and meeting his eyes again.

“This is weird. I just… I’m so sick of my parents, and it’s not like they know what I missed so they can fill me in, or anything. And you know, right? You can… tell me everything?”

“Yeah,” he says with a nod. “’Course. Anything you wanna know. Ask away.” _Not everything. But everything I can, Laurel. I swear._

Laurel still looks uneasy, shifting in bed, but begins anyway. “Okay. Uh, us. I wanna know about us. How long did we-” She stops, suddenly, furrowing her brow. “Or how long _have_ we been dating?”

Dating. Dat _ed_. They broke up, broke up bad, and he can’t tell her that, because he’d have to tell her why. He’s lying to her already, like the lying piece of shit he is, and Frank can’t help it, can’t help how naturally it rolls off his tongue as long as it means he can stay here, with her, and have her look at him like this.

He tallies up the months in his head. “Five months, about.”

“Only five months?” That surprises her. “So are we serious?”

“Yeah,” he says, doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t know how to – because yeah, they haven’t even been dating half a year, but he’s already hopelessly, irreversibly in love with her, and he’s well aware there’s no way to rationalize falling so hard so fast.

Besides being an idiot. Besides being a mortal falling in love with a goddess, powerless to save himself.

“So do you… love me?” she broaches the subject carefully, and seems relieved when he nods.

“Yeah,” Frank answers again, words heavy with meaning, voice low. “Yeah. I love you.”

_And the truth is I don’t love you back. So, we’re done. It’s over._

He remembers her words, tries not to feel sick. Tries to pretend they don’t exist now, and feels infinitely shittier when he realizes that to her, they don’t.

She pauses, thinking for a moment. “Okay, this might seem dumb, but I just wanna know where we stand, and-”

“Shoot. Anything.”

“All right. So, on a scale of one to ten, how much…” She drifts off. “How _much_ do you love me?”

He smirks, and doesn’t miss a beat. A smile lights up his face. “Eleven.”

Laurel doesn’t smile back. If anything she just seems troubled, and it makes his heart sink a bit, dangerously low into his stomach, dangling precariously by a single artery – but he has to remind himself to be patient. To give her time, as much as she needs. Weeks. Months. A year.

Forever. He’d give her forever.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, after a moment. “This is kinda a lot to take in at once. I mean… I wake up, and apparently I’m almost done with a year of law school, and I have a boyfriend, and…” She stops, choking up, her eyes glistening. “And I don’t remember any of it. And the doctors, they keep telling me that I might, one day, but also might not, and it’s just like…” She gulps, raising her eyes to the ceiling to keep her tears from falling. “I’m not me. And you seem like you really care about me, and I don’t even know you.”

“Hey,” he soothes, leaning forward and taking her hand. She doesn’t pull away, but won’t look at him either. “You’re still you. Might not feel like it, maybe. But you’re still Laurel. Still beautiful. And I’m sure when the opportunity presents itself… you’re still not gonna take any of my shit. You never did.” She sniffles, seeming encouraged by that. He gives her hand a squeeze. “I know this is weird. I know… I’m probably never gonna get how weird this feels for you, ever. But when you were out, and I didn’t know if you were gonna wake up, if I’d ever see you again… I promised you somethin’. Said I’d stay with you long as you stayed with me. And you did.”

He pauses, earnest, voice dripping with sincerity, wishing right then that he could convey how very much he loves her but realizing quickly there’s no amount of adequate adjectives and nouns and adverbs in the dictionary that could ever do that, that there’s far too much to be contained in mere words alone.

“And I still mean that,” he finishes. “If you wanna try this, I’ll try. Promise.”

“I do.” Laurel still looks unsure, all hunched in on herself and pale and fragile, but finally a grin pulls at her lips; a real one, he can tell. “Wanna try. I think I do.”

Another pause. Then-

“You, uh… You seem like a really great guy,” she says, releasing his hand. “I wish I remembered.”

_You seem like a really great guy._ The words shouldn’t make him feel as guilty as they do, shouldn’t settle in his stomach like a parasite and gnaw at him with little barbed teeth. There are so many things she doesn’t know, he thinks; things he doesn’t know how to tell her without sending her running for the hills, things he doesn’t know if he can _ever_ tell her. He seems like a great guy, and he’s a killer. He’s buried bodies. Committed just about every crime in the book and then some.

Killed an innocent girl. Killed her unborn child, and suddenly, _you seem like a really great guy_ makes him feel very, very nauseous.

He shrugs, plays it off casually; over the years, working for Annalise, he’s just about completed a master class in hiding his emotions, gotten his Ph-fucking-D in lying his ass off. “We got time. I’ll tell you the story. Everything – start to finish.”

“Okay. So… let’s start over, then. First introductions,” she tells him, sitting up and extending her hand, a bit clumsily. It catches him off guard. “I’m Laurel. Castillo. Nice to re-meet you.”

Briefly he thinks of their first meeting, all the harsh words and _misogynistic ass_ , nothing remotely polite or formal like this. But this is them starting over. Clean slate, second chance. A second chance he’s done nothing to deserve; a second chance he’s awful for even _thinking_ of as a second chance, but a second chance just the same.

A blessing. Might end up being a curse, eventually, and might end up just about killing him – but a blessing in this moment right now, with Laurel, all bright, beautiful eyes and dark hair and soft, lilting voice, looking at him like he’d been so sure she would never look at him again. Trusting him.

So he humors her, and gives her hand a firm shake, grinning like a fool. “Frank. Frank Delfino. And trust me, pleasure’s all mine.”

He takes her hand right then, takes it and gives it a shake, and it feels like stepping into some great, huge unknown – just as much as it feels like finally coming home.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s a few days later when her parents mention bringing her home with them for the first time.

Frank has only just left the room to grab a drink of water, and they pounce the second he’s gone, trying to lace their words with care and concern so as not to spook her – which doesn’t work. They spook her plenty.

“So, dear, we’re been thinking,” her mother begins, settling down into the chair at her side. Her father lingers behind her, arms folded, as imposing as ever even while trying his hardest not to be, “about what comes next, for you. Where your… best options are, to recover.”

“Recover what?” She frowns, suspecting where this is going but choosing to play dumb, initially. “I can move everything okay.”

It’s true; her body had come out remarkably unscathed from the accident, as a whole. She can move all her limbs without issue, besides a bit of numbness in her left foot and occasional trouble making her fingers bend exactly the way she wants them to. Her arm is still broken, and her ribs are too – but for the most part, besides her scrambled and mixed-up mind, she’s all right.

Relatively. Everything is relative, these days.

Her mother hesitates, then plasters on an artificial smile that looks even more artificial on her Botox-laden features. “Honey, we mean your memories. We want you to be somewhere you’re familiar with, that feels like home, so you can… get acclimated again. Me and your father were thinking it’d be best for you to come home to Florida with us, for the rest of the summer.”

She goes tense. “Home?”

“We just want what’s best for you, _mija_ ,” her father chimes in. “We want to help you heal.”

_Home_. She has to admit how tempting it sounds, at first. Home. Florida. The Castillo family mansion, with its white stucco exterior and orange terra cotta roof and lush green lawns and private beach she’d spent so many summers as a child playing at. Familiarity. Her siblings. Her parents. She’d be home, with people she knows, places she knows, a _world_ she knows – not this one, cold and unwelcoming and full of strangers.

It sounds tempting, at first – but then she remembers, out of nowhere, why she’d picked Middleton. To get away. Get away from her father, from all his depravity; get away from that disgusting, despicable life before it could rub off on her, tarnish her. Become someone better. Help people. That’s why she’d wanted to leave, in the first place: to get away, and she realizes, then, that she still wants that; that she may want to go home, want it desperately, but can’t.

She won’t.

She shakes her head, frowning. “I don’t want to go home.”

That seems to catch them off guard; clearly, they hadn’t anticipated having to try to persuade her, and that makes anger spike underneath her skin – to think that they view her as a child now, someone so easily manipulated and controlled.

“But darling, don’t you think it would be better?” her mother urges, her voice cooing and condescending, like she might as well be talking to a kindergartener. “You’ve been through something very traumatic. Home is the best place for you to heal. Just think; you can see everyone. Vanessa and your brothers. Relax on the beach. Get away from the city. The doctors think it would be best, too, and-”

“I don’t care what they think,” she shoots back, harshly. “And I don’t care what you think. I want to stay here. I have… Frank, here.”

Her mother sends her father a look, silently requesting backup, and so he clears his throat, trying to reason with her too. “ _Mija_ , don’t take this the wrong way, but… You don’t _know_ Frank. He seems like a good man, yes, but-”

“But he knows _me_ ,” Laurel cuts him off. “He loves me. And he can help me remember, I know he can.” She pauses, licking her dry lips and shaking her head. “I told him I’d try, being with him again. And I want to.”

Her mother frowns. “Laurel, please, be reasonable-”

“I am being reasonable. I’m not some… some little kid you get to boss around anymore. I have a life here.” She stops, and lowers her eyes, quieting her voice. “Maybe I don’t remember it anymore. But I know I do.” _Or did. Did, once upon a time._

Her father opens his mouth to say something, but the door opens before he can, and in steps Frank, a little package of Oreos and cup of water in hand. When all three pairs of their eyes fly to him, he halts in his tracks, as if deducing he’s walked in at precisely the wrong moment.

“Should I come back, or…?”

“No,” Laurel answers, shaking her head. “It’s fine. Come in.”

Her mother gives him an overly-pleasant smile and reaches for her purse, going for the door. “We’ll leave you two alone, hmm?”

She motions for her father to follow – and he does, but not before glancing back at Laurel and telling her, “This conversation is not over, Laurel.”

With that, they take their leave of the room and close the door behind them. Frank glances over at her cautiously, seems to notice she’s upset, and furrows his brow, settling down into the chair beside her where her mother had been, and placing the Oreos and water on the little table next to the bed, ostensibly for her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she mutters, and starts to pick idly at a bloody hangnail on her thumb like she’s taken to doing recently, sighing. “They’re trying to get me to come home with them. Told me that I don’t know you, or… anyone here. And they’re right. I had a life here, and… I lost it. And maybe I _don’t_ belong here, anymore.”

Frank is silent, and it’s a solemn sort of silence, before finally he asks, “You wanna go home?”

“I don’t know,” is all she says, still without looking at him. “I just… I don’t know.”

“If you want to, you should.”

Laurel blinks, at that. It seems to pain him to say the words, and for a while she just looks at him, staring blankly, her brain doing that odd little thing it’s started doing recently where it stutters and hiccups like a skipping record, and takes a moment before it rights itself and she can remember what she was thinking. Absence seizure – that’s what the doctors had called it. Brief, tiny little seizures that are more minor annoyances than anything, that flicker on and off, in and out. She thinks it’s a very apt name; she feels absent during them, hollow. Broken. Malfunctioning.

And she _hates_ feeling broken.    

Finally, she snaps out of it and looks at him. “You wouldn’t… You’re not gonna ask me to stay?”

He gives her a crooked little grin that fails to take root in his eyes. “’Course I want you to stay. But if you wanna go home, get better there… I’m not gonna try to stop you.” He stops, voice lowering a bit, audibly grimmer. “’Sides, you don’t got anything keepin’ you here.”

“I do,” she protests, gulping. “Or… I _did_ , I-”

“I’ll be happy, long as you’re happy.” His eyes meet hers, again with that tenderness, again with all that love. “That’s all I need to know. That you’re happy, out there somewhere.”

“I do have something keeping me here,” she says, suddenly. “I have _you_.”

“Laurel-”

“No. I do. I don’t care what they say, if they tell me I don’t know you anymore. I know you’d never lie to me. I know… that you said you love me.” Laurel drifts off, shaking her head. “I left home to get away from them. My parents. I remember that. So I’m not going back. I’m gonna stay here.” She meets his eyes, chin raised at a determined angle. “I’m gonna stay.”

That gets a real smile out of him, his eyes lighting up, his gaze warming her all over. It’s captivating, just to look at him; to realize, for the first time, how handsome he really is. She’s been wondering what drew her to him at first, but looking at Frank in that instant, all blue-eyed tenderness, lit from behind by sunlight streaming in through the window and staring at her so intently it feels almost as though he’s touching her, Laurel thinks she has a pretty good idea what did.

“Good,” he remarks after a moment, relaxing and leaning back in the chair. “’Cause we got a lot to catch you up on.”

Laurel smiles, and it feels like reaffirming their unspoken promise before, when they’d shaken hands, agreed to embark on this journey together; no matter how hard it’ll be, however it’ll end. She doesn’t trust the doctors, all their carefully-measured optimism sprinkled with just the right amount of grave realism. She doesn’t trust her parents, never really has; she doesn’t think they’ve ever spent so much time with her before in her life as they have here in the hospital these past few weeks, even when she was a child. But Frank…

She trusts Frank. Frank, who doesn’t tiptoe around her. Frank, who tells her he loves her; Frank, her lover and her stranger. She trusts him, almost immeasurably, and it feels so natural to do so, so easy.

So Laurel nods, and gives him the tiniest, most tentative of smiles. “Yeah, well. I’m looking forward to it.”

 

~

 

In the days leading up to her release from the hospital, her parents don’t let up.

If anything, as the date grows closer and closer, they grow more insistent, accordingly. Whenever they’re with her, without fail, one of them broaches the subject, each with a different approach: her mother’s is sly and subtle, edging into the conversation gently or making some seemingly offhand comment about how _nice_ the ocean is this time of year, or how _glad_ her siblings would be to see her, or how _good_ the fresh air down there would be for her. Her father’s approach is decidedly more direct, confronting her head-on, sometimes aggressively and once even inciting a shouting match that her mother has to mediate.

None of it sways her, not for a second; if anything, it only strengths her resolve – and so, finally, on the morning they release her, they concede defeat.

Frank brings her some clothes from her apartment: a baggy blue Middleton sweatshirt and jeans, and she dresses, grateful to be wearing something other than her scratchy, paper-thin hospital gown for once. Her parents come to help her round up the few remaining flower arrangements and toss them, and just as she’s about to step outside down the hall to check out her mother places a hand on her shoulder, giving her a sad little grin.

“I hope you’re not angry with us, Laurel,” she says, looking genuine; a once in a blue moon occurrence. “We were just trying to do what we thought was best for you. But if you think it’s best for you to be here… We won’t try to persuade you otherwise. Just know that you’re always welcome home.”

Laurel melts, a little, and un-hardens her heart, letting her draw her in for a hug. “I know, mom.”

Her father, who is standing over next to Frank, claps him on the shoulder a bit too hard to be friendly, so hard it shoves the other man forward. His jaw is clenched, eyes set, face fixed into an expression something like a glower.

“Take care of her, Frank,” he all but orders, with a bite in his voice. “I’m trusting you to do that for me, do you understand? She is my daughter, and I am entrusting her to your care. Do not pressure her to do anything, ever. Do not hurt her. Do not so much as make her _cry_ , because I will know if you do, and God help me-”

Laurel frowns, pulling away and trying to intervene. “Dad…”

“I won’t,” Frank promises, shaking his head. “I’d never. I promise.”

“Good.” Her father nods, and releases him, but doesn’t smile to dispel the tension in the air. Instead he just looks to Laurel, and nods toward the door. “Let’s get you home, _mija_.”

So they do. They discharge her from the hospital, and the nurses insist on rolling her out in a wheelchair even though she protests, making a half-hearted joke under her breath that it’s her brain that’s broken, not her legs. It does hurt to walk, and even to move, but luckily they’ve given her enough narcotics to last her more than a month, and probably also enough to get her thoroughly addicted. They tell her to space them out, only take them when she needs them. Not abuse them.

She’d laugh, if her ribs weren’t killing her. She’s not sure she can make that promise.

They part ways with her parents in the parking lot. They give her final farewell hugs, offering to take her back to her apartment themselves, but she shakes her head, extricating herself from their embraces and telling them she’d rather go with Frank instead. They seem reluctant but don’t protest, and when Frank pulls his BMW up in front of the hospital she steps into the passenger side, watching them fade into the distance as he drives away, feeling the faintest twinge of sadness – and at the same time, overwhelming _relief_.

Fear, too. Undeniable fear, like she’s stepping into some unknown, venturing into uncharted territory, what might as well be a new world. It’s terrifying. Liberating, a little bit.

But mostly terrifying.

They arrive at the place Frank tells her she lives – a tall, five-story apartment building not far from Middleton’s campus – and he puts the car into park, grabbing her duffle bag of belongings out of his trunk and leading her up the stairs. And so she follows; he knows more about her life than she does, after all. She trusts him. She does, even if it feels like she’s stretching her arms out and falling backwards and hoping he’ll catch her, even if it feels like a trust fall, and there’s no real guarantee he won’t let her go tumbling to the ground.

He won’t. She looks sideways at him, meets his eyes, sees the warmth in them, and she knows he won’t.

“This is nice,” she murmurs, as they climb two flights of stairs and make their way down the hallway, all hardwood floors and royal blue wallpapered walls. Frank gives her a smile, seeming as though he doesn’t know what to say, and comes to a stop in front of a door that reads _32B_ in gold lettering.

Frank sets down her bag then, reaches into her pocket, and withdraws a little silver key, holding it out to her. “You wanna do the honors?”

Laurel hesitates, but nods after a second and takes it, pushing it into the lock and turning it with a _click_. She reaches for the doorknob, but before she turns it she hesitates once more, frowning.

She knows this is her life. She _knows_ this is her home, her apartment, her boyfriend at her side, and she has every reason to be happy, or at least maybe not as scared. But right then she feels like she’s living someone else’s life, opening some stranger’s door. Her hands look warped, suddenly, like they don’t belong to her. Her legs feel unsteady. She’s been an outcast before at points in her life, but she’s never had such a poignant, overwhelming sensation of _not belonging_ , of being an intruder in her own life.

Laurel makes herself swallow the feeling down, steel herself. This is her life, she tells herself, like a mantra, as she reaches for the doorknob again. This is her life, her world, no matter how much she doesn’t recognize it, no matter how cold and daunting it seems. This is her world, now. She’s not an intruder. She’s here to reclaim it.

So she raises her chin, takes a breath, and steps over the threshold.  


	6. Chapter 6

Watching Laurel explore her apartment is oddly captivating, in a way.

After so long without walking, she seems almost to wobble a bit on her feet, like a newborn foal learning how to use her legs for the first time. Her arm is still in a cast, her gravity off-center and gait unsteady, but Frank ignores the urge to hover, hanging back near the door instead and keeping his distance.

It’s a small place, her apartment; quaint, in Queen Village. Frank knows she could have afforded bigger, knows she didn’t for a reason: to not put her money on display, not be even the slightest bit ostentatious or grandiose because she’s not an ostentatious or grandiose kind of person and hates people like that, people like her father. Everything here is practical, plain, functional if not beautiful; everything here suits her perfectly.

Sparse decorations. A few paintings adorning the walls, a variety of potted plants in the corners, most of which are wilting and turning brown after almost a month without care. A small living area just to the left of the door, and a kitchenette on the right. Hardwood flooring in both. He knows this place almost better than his own apartment, has it imprinted on every lobe of his brain, remembers exactly how it smells, remembers exactly which spot where his feet creak on the floorboards just inside the door, remembers pressing her up against the wall just inside that door too many times to count, kissing her until her body molded perfectly against his.

Bit by bit, very slowly, Laurel rediscovers the place too.

She stops in the middle of the room between the living area and kitchenette and glances around, eyes mostly blank, face not betraying any emotion, then makes a circle around it, hugging the wall. Part of Frank had been hoping, maybe a bit irrationally, that coming here might spark something in her – a memory, no matter how tiny or inconsequential – but as she wanders around, tracing her fingers along the marble countertop and pulling at the leaves of one of her dying plants idly, it becomes more and more apparent that she doesn’t.

Which is okay. Slow and steady. She doesn’t need to, right now, and even if she never does he won’t love her any less. He loves her even more, in fact, with every second he watches her right then, all bare-faced and unwashed hair and curious blue eyes, seeing her world for the first time all over again with newfound fascination and twice as much fear.

He isn’t sure he’s ever loved her more than he loves her then.

“I don’t remember this place,” she finally speaks up, startling him out of his trance-like state. She turns and looks at him, folding her arms, shifting awkwardly. “I thought I would.”

He shrugs, tries to act optimistic, though he doesn’t feel it. “’S not a big deal. Just a place. You’ll get reacquainted fast enough.”

That doesn’t seem to cheer her up much. Laurel gives him one of those smiles that’s less like a smile and more like a grimace, and for a moment neither of them say a word, just stand there, mere feet apart, though it might as well be mile to Frank. She feels so distant and far away suddenly, like he’ll never be able to reach her, draw out what was once in her.

Finally, he just nods at the duffle bag in his hand and asks, “You want this in the bedroom?”

She nods, silently, and he makes his way down the hallway, dropping the bag onto the floor and wondering if he should unpack it for her. He decides to ask before he does, and so he walks back out, finding Laurel seated on one of the stools in front of her counter, brow furrowed, eyes closed, face scrunched up as if in pain.

He stops at her side, stomach sinking. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs, opening her eyes and squinting but not looking at him. “Just a headache. I’ve been getting them a lot, since…”

She drifts off. He doesn’t need her to finish, but that doesn’t do anything to lessen his concern.

“You sure you’re okay, though? That it’s not-”

“A brain hemorrhage?” She cracks a wry grin, but it doesn’t climb to her eyes and dies on her lips shortly afterward. She reaches for the bag of medicines they’d given her, popping open a little orange prescription bottle – something for pain, probably, because she has a lot for the pain. “If blood starts pouring out of my ears, I’ll let you know.”

That’s dark, really damn dark and not humorous to him in any way, but Laurel seems to find it funny, and she sighs after a moment, grabbing a glass of water from the sink, popping a few little white pills into her mouth, and taking a drink of it to wash them down. He stands by, and Laurel sets aside the glass, nodding towards the hallway.

“I, uh, I’m gonna go lay down.”

Frank nods, dumbly, still not knowing what to say or do. Finally, he settles on blurting out, “If you need anything…”

“Yeah.” Laurel nods, and again gives him that little cheerless grimace-grin of hers. “I’ll let you know.”

With that, she turns and plods off down the hall, disappearing into her bedroom, sullen and silent as a ghost.

He watches her go, troubled for reasons he can’t discern.

 

~

 

The pain pills knock Laurel out for a good four hours.

He sets about cleaning her place in the meantime, dusting off the empty bookshelves in her living room and dumping half a gallon of water on every wilting plant, on the off chance that he might somehow be able to reverse their inevitable demise. He cleans out her fridge, tossing expired milk and eggs and lunchmeat, but manages to find a box of pasta and a jar of tomato sauce to make them both lunch. It’s a step down from his typical gourmet Italian cooking, but he’s not about to leave and have her wake up alone while he’s gone, even though he knows she’d be fine if she did, that she can take care of herself, that he’s not her caretaker or her keeper and she’d never want him to be either of those things.

_I’ll stay if you stay._ That’s what he’d told her, and he intends to keep that promise. Always will. If Laurel wants him to go, asks him to leave her life and never come back, he will without question – but not a moment sooner.

His phone rings, just as he’s finishing tossing out the last few spoiled food items. He stops what he’s doing and pulls it out of his pocket, only to find Bonnie’s name lighting up the screen. It makes him hesitate, at first; Bonnie’s been critical of this situation with Laurel ever since she woke up, probably rightfully so, and he can’t say he blames her, given the circumstances.

He answers nonetheless, and raises it up to his ear. “Hey Bon.”

“Hey,” she greets. “They release her from the hospital yet?”

“Yeah. I’m at her place with her now. She’s sleepin’. Took a crap ton of painkillers.”

“How is she?”

Frank lets out a breath. “She doesn’t remember her apartment or anything. Hasn’t said much, either. Just got a headache and went to lay down.”

“And you’re… what? Staying over there with her for good?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe, if she wants. She’s just… She’s quieter. And she was quiet before, I mean, but… it’s different.”

“She’s probably terrified,” Bonnie tells him. “I mean, imagine you wake up in a world you don’t know, dating a guy you’ve never met, living a life you had no idea was yours.” She pauses. Then, on the other end of the line, he hears her sigh. “It isn’t good what you’re doing. You two broke up, and she needs to know that. She needs to know _why_.”

His stomach goes sour. “Bon…”

“You’re lying to her, again. Think of how she reacted the first time, to Lila. A-and now you’re… gonna make her trust you again. And if you never tell her… Frank, you can’t lie to her like that.”

“Can’t,” he manages to say, voice strained. He sinks down heavily onto her couch, gulping heavily, acutely aware just how much of a deluded hopeless idiot he is, how far deep he’s in. "I just… I can’t tell her. About Lila. ‘Bout Sam, either. You got any idea how much that fucked her up? And now it’s like it never happened. She’s… she’s got a chance, to start over. A real chance. She can be normal.” He stops, choked up. “So I can’t. I can’t do that to her.” _I can’t ruin her. I can’t let it all ruin her again. Not when I can stop it. Make it all disappear._

He can sense Bonnie’s exasperation. “Frank, this is… God, this is all such a mess.”

“It’s fucked up,” he mutters, bowing his head, clenching his jaw. “It’s fucked up to be kinda happy, I know that, I just… I got her back. I got a shot with her, again. And _she’s_ got a shot, to be happy. She can forget all that stuff ever happened and move on – and none of the other kids are gonna be able to do that.” He inhales and exhales, steadying his voice. “I can’t tell her.”

_If you loved her_ , a tiny little voice intercedes, _you’d be honest with her. Tell her, and set her free. You are a lying, selfish piece of shit. You do not and will never deserve her._

He stomps down the voice, and Bonnie’s replaces it, fading back into his consciousness.

“You’re wrong,” she tells him, not sounding angry, just inexplicably sounding sad. “That’s wrong to keep that from her. And I hate myself for it, but… I almost understand where you’re coming from.”

He laughs, and it comes out in a burst, rough and dark and thick with sorrow. “I got no clue what to do. She didn’t want to go home with her folks. If I tell her she’ll be done with me, for good. And she’ll be alone. And she won’t have anybody – and I can’t do that to her.” He pauses, shaking his head. “I got no idea what to do.”

“Nothing, for now,” Bonnie finally says, sounding certain. “You can’t tell her when she’s still recovering; it’d upset her too much. Take it day by day. Just try to help her feel normal.”

“I will. ‘Course I will.” Again, he pauses, glancing down the hall, toward the bedroom door where she rests. “I love her.”

She sighs, and in the sound he swears he can hear something along the lines of _You fool, you poor stupid fool_. “I know you do. And I know… you’re probably the best and worst person she could be with to help her through this, right now.”

They end the call not long after, and Frank hangs up, setting his phone aside, running a hand through his hair, over his beard, then getting back to his feet, shaking the unsettling conversation off. He boils a pot of water, dropping the pasta in and then pouring the jar of tomato sauce on top of it after it’s drained, his motions distracted, more robotic than anything.  

He is lying to her. Every second he’s here he’s lying. He’s not her boyfriend, not anymore. That was a lie, calling himself that – the first of many, he's sure.

And he can’t tell her the truth. He can’t; he lost her once by telling her, and it'd damn near killed him, and he knows losing her again actually would. He can pretend it’s for her own good, all the lying, and maybe it is – but it’s for his too.

_You are a lying piece of shit_ , the voice echoes again. He thinks it might be the tiny, shriveled up, wheezing remains of his conscience.

He knows it’s not wrong.

But Frank casts out the thoughts, squashes that little devil of veracity on his shoulder, spoons the pasta into a bowl, grabs a fork, and makes his way down the hallway, slowly inching open her bedroom door with a soft _creak_. The room is dark when he steps inside; Laurel had closed the blinds and turned off all the lights, bathing in blackness to rest. She’s lying under the covers, still in her sweatshirt from what he can see, a blindfold pulled over her eyes, chest rising and falling with tiny, near-imperceptible movements – so tiny that for a moment he can’t even see them, and has a mild heart attack.

He’s trying not to fuss over her. Really he is, no matter how much he may want to. But it’s damn hard sometimes.

Frank approaches, footsteps quiet sweeps on the carpet. Once he reaches her bedside, he freezes, not sure if he should wake her or leave her to rest, and after a moment of contemplation he decides on the latter, setting down the bowl on the nightstand as softly as he can. It still ends up making a noise, though – a low, thick _clunk_ – which is apparently enough to pierce her thin veil of slumber, because she stirs, giving a series of muffled, sleepy sounds and rolling over. After a moment Laurel peels back her blindfold and squints up at him, her nose twitching at the smell of food.

“Hey,” she croaks, propping herself up on her good arm.

“Hey,” he greets. “Brought you lunch. It’s not fancy or anything, but-”

“No. It smells good,” she assures him, and flashes a toothless smile, and when he sees it, sees that spark in her that is so distinctively _Laurel_ – Laurel, looking at him like she used to, smiling for him – he thinks he stops breathing for a second. Frank notices her struggling to sit up with her broken arm, and helps her, propping a pillow up behind her back, turning on the light, and handing her the bowl. “Thanks.”

Frank draws back, standing by the side of the bed, again not sure what to do. “You want me to go, or…?”

She shakes her head, and moves over, removing her blindfold and setting it to the side. “No, stay.”

So he does. He wouldn’t rather be anywhere in the world than by her side now, if he’s being honest, and so he settles himself down on the bed next to her legs – not too close, but close enough for her to feel him – watching her as she takes a bite and chews contemplatively for a minute.

“Next chance I get I’ll run to the store,” he tells her, smirking. “Make you some real Italian food.”

“Are you a good cook?”

“Not to toot my own horn, but yeah. Pretty good. Learned from my ma.” A pause. “You met her, my ma. Both my folks.”

She looks up at him, curious. “I did?”

“Yeah. They loved you. Said you’re the best I’m ever gonna have so I better never screw it up.”

Laurel blushes a little, and again, there’s that smile, that sparkle and shine, visible even through the groggy haze of her pain meds. “Well, I guess I’ll have to re-meet them too. They’re Italian?”

“Crazy Italian,” he chuckles. “Us Delfinos practically got marinara sauce flowing in our veins.”

That earns him a soft laugh, and for a long moment they’re silent, the only sound to be heard the scraping of Laurel’s fork against the bowl as she eats.

“What day’s it?” she wonders aloud. “Wednesday?”

Frank pauses, honestly doesn’t know; during the weeks Laurel was in the hospital time lost all meaning, and blurred into one continuous stretch of existing. So he pulls out his phone and checks quickly, then nods.

“Yeah.”

“So you don’t have a job, during the week?” she asks.

Frank frowns, before he can help it. “I, uh, I used to. ‘Til recently. I… messed up. Boss fired me. She was your boss too, actually.”

“My boss?”

“Yeah. Annalise Keating.” The name pains him to say. He hopes it isn’t obvious. “She’s a defense attorney. Big shot, ruthless as hell. You were her intern for the year.”

“Oh.” Laurel furrows her brow. “Is that how we met? You’re a lawyer?”

“Not exactly.” He pauses, and realizes all at once he never actually had an official job title. _Hired gun_ would be probably accurate, he figures. _Henchman. Dog_. “I dealt with other stuff. Stuff that needed… discretion.”

Laurel looks confused, but doesn’t press. “And we worked together?”

“Yeah.”

“How? How’d we meet, I mean?”

He raises his eyebrows. “You want the abridged version or the long version?”

Laurel lies back against the pillows, humming softly, grinning again. “Mmm… Long version.”

Frank pauses, not sure how to tell the story without making himself look like a total dick, but eventually relenting and accepting the fact that there’s probably no way around that. “Uh, okay. Buckle up then.”

_Here goes nothing._

“So each year Annalise picks four students to come work for her. You were in her class – Criminal Law. She has you all work a case for her, to help her figure out who she’s pickin’, psychoanalyze you, whatever. It was some lady on trial, rich guy’s mistress who almost killed him. She walked in the end – but she was probably guilty, did it on purpose. Anyway… this one afternoon when you were at the courthouse with them, you saw her with the guy’s wife. Figured they’d worked together to take him out.”

He pauses, wetting his lips. Laurel listens, intently. “There was a party, that night. For all Annalise’s students or something. You didn’t go. I was at the office, and you showed up there, told me what you saw.” He smirks, shaking his head. “I didn’t know what you wanted me to do about it; it was just evidence our client was guilty, and that was the last thing we wanted, ‘cause we wanted to win. And you went on and on about the moral repercussions of defending a guilty client, all do-gooder, idealistic fluff. So I… said some stuff back. Asshole stuff, ‘bout girls who get their law degree and get a job and then quit to have kids. I used to be an asshole, before we started dating.”

_And still am_ , that voice reminds him. And Frank can’t really argue with it on that.

He drifts off, meeting her eyes, voice low and tender. “And you looked me in the eyes, and called me a misogynistic ass, and stormed out. I’ll never forget it.”

She blinks, the ghost of the smile playing at her lips. “And I still ended up dating you after that?”

“Hard to believe, I know,” he chuckles. “Just couldn’t resist I guess.”

Laurel laughs. “And after? How’d I get to work with her?”

“Oh, she, uh, she let me and her other associate have some say over who she picked,” he explains, and lowers his voice. “So I picked you.”

Laurel chortles. “Because I called you a misogynistic ass?”

“’Course. You didn’t take any of my bullshit. I liked that. They used to call you Frank’s Girl.” He pauses, trying to choose his words carefully. “Look… I’m not gonna lie, Laurel. I’d done that before. Other students…”

He trails off, suddenly feeling like the worst piece of scum in existence. Laurel’s smile reverses itself. “Other… girls?”

He nods, then looks at her, so honest right then that he hopes she can sense it, can believe him, won’t hate him even though _he_ certainly does. “They were never like you. What we had, what we _got_ …” He stops, gaze locked on her, so firmly he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to look away. “It’s different. I never… loved anyone, like I loved you. Like I love you.”

“So, basically… You were an asshole playboy with a heart of gold before you met me, is that what you’re trying to say?” she asks, her frown relaxing. Her words even sound joking. “And… what? I _miraculously_ transformed you?”

He chuckles, relaxing as well. “Pretty much, yeah. Worked your magic.”

“I can’t believe I did that, you know,” she scoffs. “Dated my boss.”

“I wasn’t your boss.”

She looks skeptical. “Really?”

“Well…” He relents with a shrug. “If you wanna get technical about it…”

That gets him a laugh; almost full-chested, and free, and as musical as bells. “You said you got fired. What’d you do?”

He tenses, and lowers his eyes. “It’s, uh… It’s a long story.”

“Well, you better get used to those. You’re gonna have to be telling me a lot of long stories.”

“Yeah,” he concedes. “But maybe… just not that one, today.” He glances down at her empty bowl. “You done? I’ll take that to the kitchen.”

She nods, and hands it to him. He stands and goes for the door – but at the last second something occurs to him, and he turns.

“You be okay if I invited some people over?” he asks, surprising her.

She blinks. “What, people I knew? My friends?”

_Friends. I guess you could call them that._

“Yeah. Co-workers, from our firm. Students,” he explains. “There’s four of ‘em. They’ve been askin’ about you.”

She nods. “Yeah, sure. If they’re my friends, then yeah.”

Frank grins, and turns, and frowns a little on his way out, as he sets the dishes in the sink. That word echoes in his ear canals, playing on repeat. Disconcerting him, a little.

_Friends_. Well, he sure as hell was not about to call them her murder buddies, that’s for certain.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all!! We're still chugging along. I did want to give a quick update to tell you this fic has been completed, and has come to 20 chapters and roughly 78k words! So if you're living in fear of this never being finished, don't worry. It will be, but I'm publishing it bit by bit.
> 
> I also haven't been receiving many comments on this fic, and comments really do encourage me to update/edit faster, so PLEASE if you have time, do leave some. They mean a lot :)

The next afternoon, the arrival of her visitors is heralded by a few quick raps on her apartment door.

Laurel is curled up on the couch watching some shitty Lifetime movie when she hears them, and they make her flinch ever so slightly, the sound amplified tenfold to her ears, before she looks at the time and remembers what Frank had told her: that her friends would over today to visit, bring her some lunch – from a good Chinese place down the street she apparently loves.

Her friends. Co-workers. Part of her wants to see them. Part of her really does _not_ want to see them, to go through the exhausting, awkward process of re-meeting them, the peculiarity of looking at them and not knowing them while they claim to have some whole other one-sided relationship with her. It’s fucking weird, honestly.

She doesn’t know if it’s ever going to stop being so fucking weird.

Frank, who’d been sitting at her counter, pops up from his stool and goes for the door before she can even move a muscle. “I got it.”

Laurel hauls herself to her feet and comes to a stop behind Frank, trying to be grateful for a break in the monotony but not having much luck convincing herself. She hasn’t gone back to class yet; she’ll probably have to retake the entire semester, and maybe the whole year given that she doesn’t remember a single thing she learned. She’s only been home for a day, and hasn’t been outside, and doesn’t really have any desire to _go_ outside – because there’s nothing out there that interests her, really. She just feels like hiding, more than anything. Hiding herself away.

The rational part of her brain tells her that’s probably a harmful coping mechanism. The not-so-rational part – which seems to be the dominant one these days – tells her she’ll worry about that later.

She smoothes down the front of her sweater, feeling nervous, suddenly, when the door swings open, and five people come into view: four guys, one girl, all holding cartons of takeout and staring at her with smiles that look almost too-enthusiastic, all too carefully executed – close to being forced, but stopping just short. It’s more than a little unsettling to have five pairs of eyes locked on her at once, and Laurel shrinks back a little, folding her arms as they file in.

“Frankie D!” one of the guys, who looks like he belongs in a frat house, greets Frank with a high-five as they walk inside. “What up, my man?”

“Nothin’ much,” Frank answers, as the girl makes her way over to Laurel with a cautious, simpering smile on her face, followed by a tall, lanky boy in a plaid shirt, eyes wide, with tears and something like disbelief in them. The other two – one with faint scruff on his chin and the other with glasses, holding a bouquet of flowers – hang back near the door, not daring to approach and shifting around awkwardly.

“Hey,” the girl tells her, voice soft, placing a hand on her arm gently, touching her like she might break. “We’re so glad you’re okay. How’re you feeling?”

The tall boy doesn’t give her time to respond to that, because within seconds he’s moved forward, pulled her close, and wrapped his arms around her – like he’s forgotten she doesn’t know him. Like he’s about to collapse with relief at the sight of her.

“I was so worried about you,” he murmurs, and squeezes her so tight she’s all but smothered by his shoulder. “I was so worried, Laurel…”

It catches her off guard, and Laurel backs away slowly, extricating herself from his embrace and blinking, trying not to be freaked out by it; trying to remember these people care for her, and _know_ her, even if the sight of them all at once is almost overwhelming, her mind short-circuiting, struggling to process so much data at once – so many sounds and sights and faces that it hurts.

“Uh, sorry, but…” She shakes her head, brow furrowed. She looks at him, then to her, then back to the boy, whose eyes flood with understanding suddenly, that same crestfallen look Frank had given her when he’d realized she didn’t know him. “Who’re you?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I… I forgot.” Wes shakes his head, and holds out his hand, giving her a toothless smile. She takes it, shaking slowly. “I’m Wes. Gibbins. We’re friends. Really… good friends.”

“And I’m Michaela,” the girl introduces herself, chin held high, features soft and refined and beautiful. “Michaela Pratt. We’re also friends. Co-workers.”

Laurel nods, committing those names to memory. Wes. Michaela. She looks at the others where they stand by the door next to Frank, eyes trained intently on them; thinking seems to take so much more effort, now, and it’s exhausting, most of the time, making the cogs in her brain turn when all they ever seem to do is jam up, over and over.

Before she can ask who they are too, Frank hits the frat-boy-law-student on the arm and tells him, “Hey. Introduce yourselves.”

“Oh, I’m Asher,” he perks up, making his way over to her. “Millstone. Also known as Doucheface, if you… remember that. It’s, uh… awesome to meet you. Again. Oh _man_ you missed a lot.”

Frank glares, at that. Laurel notices, but doesn’t remark on it, more than a little bewildered by the _Doucheface_ nickname.

She’ll have to ask about the origin of that one later.  

“Connor,” the one standing near the door says, then nods at the man standing next to him. “And this is-”

“Oliver. Connor’s boyfriend. I-I don’t work with you. He does,” he jumps in, fidgeting, adjusting his glasses, and holding out the bouquet to her, full of lilies and multi-colored roses, an almost obnoxiously bright arrangement of colors. “I got these for you. I would’ve brought them to the hospital when I came, but… You had a ton already, so.”

She musters up a smile, and takes it – even though she thinks she’ll go insane if she sees another bouquet of flowers in the near future, after being inundated with them at the hospital. “Thanks.”

There’s a pause – an overtly awkward one, as the conversation lulls. It’s clear none of them know what to do, or quite how to behave around her, and even Frank looks a bit baffled and disconcerted. Laurel’s eyes flit from person to person – to Michaela, all bright eyes and too-bright smiles, then to Oliver, with his gentle, kind features, then to Asher, who she honestly has no clue how she was ever friends to begin with, if her first impressions are any indication. They stop at Wes – Wes, who looks more genuine than any of them – and she wonders what she’d missed, with him. What they were.

It’s clear no one is going to make a move unless she does, so finally Laurel makes herself speak up, “Uh, let’s sit down. You guys brought lunch?”

“Yeah,” Connor jumps in, and steps forward, holding out two cartons to her. “Orange chicken and white rice from Wok Out. Your fav. Oh, and an eggroll too.”

“C’mon,” Frank tells them, striding over to the couch and nodding at it. “Bon appetit.”

So they do. Laurel takes a seat in one of the armchairs in front of the coffee table, and Frank sits at her side, while the others take the couch or pull up chairs from the counter, forming a circle and digging into their food. If she’s being honest, she hasn’t had much of an appetite for weeks, even before she’d left the hospital; she eats more mechanically than anything, not tasting much, doing it because she knows she needs to. The others talk, chattering on about exams and work, things she doesn’t really understand but pretends to, faking smiles and laughs, but after a while it fades to a low, muffled hum in the background, like white noise.

“So,” Michaela’s voice finally breaks through, startling her out of her hazy state. “Are you coming back to work anytime soon? We’ve missed you.”

Everyone’s eyes fly to her. Laurel pokes at her chicken idly, shaking her head. “I don’t know. What do we do, exactly?”

“Grunt work,” Connor pipes up, in between bites of rice. “Bottle of the totem poll stuff. Paperwork. Witness prep-”

“Pretty baller illegal ish, sometimes,” Asher chips in, jokingly, and Laurel frowns.

“… Illegal?”

Asher freezes, seems to realize he’s made some kind of mistake. Luckily, Michaela jumps in, smiling but looking decidedly unsettled by his words. “He’s joking. Basically we’re interns, but with no pay and more hours and more misery. And it’s fun – sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Wes says. “Annalise can be… kinda hard to work for. But overall it’s rewarding. And I’m sure she’d love to have you back whenever you feel like it.”

“She would?” Laurel furrows her brow. “I don’t remember anything I learned all year.”

Connor shrugs. “So we’ll give you a crash course. Let you borrow our outlines. You’ll be back up and running in no time, right guys?”

They all give enthusiastic nods of agreement, and that actually coaxes a genuine smile out of Laurel, toothless and tiny, but there all the same.

“Uh, thanks. That’d be great.” She pauses, letting out a sigh. “I don’t know, though. Right now I just…”

Michaela’s eyes widen, and she sits up straight, suddenly looked scared out of her wits, like they’ve said the wrong thing, upset her. It’s clear they’re all walking on eggshells around her – just like her parents had – and it’s so frustrating Laurel has to bite her tongue to keep from screaming, right then, because that’s not what she wants. She just wants normal, again.

God, she wants to feel normal so bad it _eats_ at her.  

“Oh – well, whenever you’re ready, of course,” the other girl corrects herself hastily. “I’m sure Annalise would keep you on in the summer, if you wanted.”

Laurel glances over at Frank, who looks about ready to open his mouth and say something, but she speaks before he can speak for her, chin raised, voice firm.

“I don’t want this to be weird,” she tells them, eyes circling around the room. “I know… I know it is, anyway. I wish I knew you guys like you know me, but…” She exhales sharply, stabbing her chopsticks into her rice. “I’m still me. I guess that’s all I’m trying to say.”

Another awkward silence follows, and _fuck_ , Laurel thinks, she really, really hates this – this not knowing, this being tiptoed around, treated like some fragile, breakable, easily startled animal. She wants to be happy, wants to get to know these people – because they seem nice enough, even though they don’t look like people she’d normally be friends with – but somehow, deep inside her, she has the sense that she never will, will never know what brought them together. Will never understand the inside jokes, the funny stories or anecdotes – any of it.

That things will never be how they were. And she doesn’t even know how they _were_ at all.

Again, it quickly becomes evident no one intends to speak, so Laurel sets her carton of food onto the coffee table and mumbles an excuse under her breath, something about needing to use the restroom – when all she needs, really, is an escape, because the tension in the air is so thick that it feels like it’s suffocating her. She hates herself, right then, so much she feels sick. For being defective. Broken. For being so fucking _sensitive_ about everything.

For not being able to remember – God, why can’t she just _remember_?

So she gives into her flight response and hides in the bathroom for a good five minutes, sitting on the toilet seat hugging her arms to her body, all shrunken up and hunched in on herself. She hasn’t felt this way since middle school; since she was the quiet girl with glasses who’d eat alone in the bathroom stalls rather than face the shame of eating alone, and the loneliness of that memory hits her hard when it resurfaces from somewhere deep, making a lump well up in her throat. Maybe she’s regressed, back to how she was then. Forgotten how to be herself. And she’s never been an angry person, not as far as she can remember, but she’s so angry right then that she thinks she could rip her own hair out, bash her head against the wall. Michaela. Wes. Connor. Asher. Oliver. They’re her friends. Her _friends_. By all accounts she should be overjoyed to see them, and yet all they do is make her acutely aware of how little she knows about her world, how much she still has yet to learn – how much she doesn’t know if she can _ever_ learn.

They can tell her things, sure. Relay funny story after funny story to her, as many as they want. They can describe them in vivid detail down to the minutest descriptors of what she’d been wearing, but the fact of the matter is that they’ll all fall flat, like jokes with no punchline; stories she _just had to be there_ to understand the hilarity of – and she was. She was there.

Laurel thinks that’s the most frustrating part of all.

She emerges after brooding for a good ten minutes, deciding that they’ll figure out she’s hiding if she keeps this up for much longer, and most likely Frank will come find her – and she really does not want to have to try to wade through the veritable tempest of emotions flooding her to explain herself to him, right now. So she takes a look at herself in the mirror – bare-faced, no makeup, hair lying flat and limp on her shoulders and desperately needing to be washed – before steeling herself and pulling open the door, only to find Wes waiting in the bedroom outside, glancing around as if trying to occupy himself. His head jerks in her direction when he hears the door open, and he grins as she approaches, coming to a stop in front of him.

“Hey,” she greets, and he shoves his hands into his pockets, shifting on his feet.

“Hey. I, uh… You were taking a while. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Well, I haven’t had an aneurysm yet, so,” she jokes, darkly, before she can realize she should probably not be making light of something that could very possibly kill her. “I’m just peachy.”

Wes pauses. His eyes go a bit wide, before he seems to realize she’s joking and lets himself relax. “Right. Yeah. Well, I wanted to talk to you too. Alone. I know I said we were just friends, but…” He breathes out, searching for the right words. “We’re… really good friends. Best friends. We get along with the others, yeah, but… We’ve always been closer. A team.”

Laurel doesn’t know how she’s supposed to react to this, really – to someone very awkwardly informing her that they’re her best friend, despite the fact she only met them half an hour ago. But she figures this is going to become a regular occurrence now, and she’s just going to have to start rolling with the punches if she wants to have any shot at regaining some sense of normalcy in her life – so she makes herself smile, though it flounders a bit, and her lips only end up pursed together tight into a thin, grim-looking line.

“Um, okay,” she says, nodding, then gives a forced chuckle. “I’ll have to take your word for it, huh?”

“I just… I’m really happy you’re okay.” He swallows heavily, lowering his eyes. “We didn’t know if you were gonna make it. And I was so scared we were gonna lose you – and I get that this must be weird, me telling you I’m your best friend and all when you don’t know me, but…” He meets her eyes, and his are full of sincerity; more sincerity than any of the others have shown today combined. “I just want you to know I’m really happy to have you back.”

She gives a watery laugh, tears beading her eyes. “You’re really nice, you know that?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, well…”

“You… So you said you’re my best friend, right?”

Wes nods, looking confused. “Yeah.”

“Can I just…” She pauses. “This is weird, but… I just need a hug right now, and-”

“Yeah,” Wes nods, and reaches out. “Yeah, ‘course.”

So she moves in close, seeking comfort, burying her face into his shoulder, and he’s so tall and she’s so tiny that she thinks right then that she could disappear into thin air, vanish forever – and that’s what she thinks she wants, right now: to vanish. But the realization comes to her, unbidden, hard as a punch in the gut, that she doesn’t _want_ to, suddenly – not really. She has Wes. She has Frank. She has the others, and she can piece her life back together, and make sense of it – no matter how long it takes, or how hard and exhausting and arduous a task it is. She could’ve run home to Florida, taken the easy way out, but she chose to stay for one reason and one reason only: to get her life here back. And she will.

She’s not going to give up, lay down and die, let this beat her. She’s _not_. She’s going to fight because she’s been fighting all her life, and what’s one more battle in that war, really?

They reemerge in the living room a few minutes later, and after talking for a while longer and finishing their food, the others file out the door – all of them except Frank, who sets about cleaning up after they’re gone, zipping around the kitchen while Laurel excuses herself, pops a few pain pills indiscriminately, and goes to lay down. He gives her a worried look but doesn’t say anything, and so Laurel makes her way down the hall and all but plummets down onto her bed like a lead weight, inexplicably exhausted by the visit, but not in an entirely bad way.

It’s an adjustment period, she reminds herself. She wants normal, and one day… all of this will feel normal again. It will.

She has to believe that it will.

Laurel drifts for a while in that liminal greyness, her systems too wide awake to boot down, her eyes wandering the ceiling aimlessly. After maybe half an hour, the bedroom door creaks open, a small beam of light slowly widening on the carpet and flooding the room, followed by Frank with a glass of water in hand. It’s hard to see his face, lit from behind as he is and face obscured by shadows, but she can make out that look of tenderness and concern that weighs down the corners of his eyelids, makes him knit his brows together and frown ever-so-slightly. She considers pretending to be asleep, briefly – she doesn’t really know why, maybe just to avoid talking to him, talking to anyone – but after a moment Laurel opens her eyes and sits up a little, just as he comes to stand beside her.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

She shakes her head, lying her head back down on her pillow. “You didn’t.”

Frank sets down the glass of water. Laurel watches his every movement, taking in the sight of him, all hard edges and sharp lines that somehow also look impossibly soft. He’s an intimidating size, intimidating in a lot of ways, still so much of a mystery of a man to her – but he doesn’t scare her. She wants normal, and he _feels_ normal, somehow, like she knows Frank on some biological, inborn level, like each cell in her body was programmed to recognize him from the very start – like she knew him in a past life, and Laurel supposes she did, in a way.

“You good?” he asks, and she hums.

“Yeah.” A pause. “They were nice. I liked them. Wes, especially.”

“Yeah, you and the Puppy’ve always been close. Both the quiet ones and all that.”

She frowns. “The Puppy?”

“Oh, yeah, uh… That’s his nickname, ‘round the office. Like Doucheface.”

“Did I have one?”

“Yeah,” he answers, voice low, dripping with affection. “Wallflower.”

_Wallflower._ She likes that. “Did you come up with that?”

Another nod. It’s hard to see through the darkness, but she thinks Frank grins. “Yeah.”

Laurel tucks one hand beneath her head, angling herself towards him. “You know you don’t have to stay over here all the time, or… wait on me, or anything.”

Frank shrugs, unfazed. “I want to. ‘Sides, I’m catchin’ up on sleep while you’re out. Couch is pretty comfy, so.”

“You can just sleep here,” she tells him, like its common sense – and it is, to her. “It’s a big bed.”

Frank bristles, immediately. “Nah, I… I wouldn’t wanna, not when-”

“We’ve had sex, right?” Laurel sighs, straight-faced, too tired and hopped up on pain pills to be blushing or bashful about the topic, even though it does make her wonder about… things.

Makes her wonder about _a lot_ of things.

She swears she sees the whites of Frank’s eyes triple in size for a second, then shrink back down. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, why?”

“So, we’ve shared a bed before,” she says matter-of-factly, and yawns. “It’s not a big deal. And I want you to.”

Another smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Laurel mutters into her pillow, then _thwaps_ the other side of the bed with her good arm, more than a bit loopy on her meds and fully aware of the fact. “Now… be a good boyfriend and take a nap with me.”

Frank doesn’t need any further persuasion; he obeys without another word, circling around the bed and lying down next to her, still fully clothed in his sweater and jeans. He doesn’t move to get close, though; he might as well be building some kind of invisible wall between them for all the tension she can feel in the air, and she doesn’t want that with Frank: tension, awkwardness – not when she knows he loves her and she’s trying to figure out how to maybe, possibly, one day get to a place where she can do the same.

She ends up with her head on his chest, hair sprawled out across it, body curled up against him. She has no clue how it happens, only that it does, and Frank doesn’t seem to be complaining, and she most definitely isn’t, because she’d needed this. Needed someone. And she may not know him, not well anyway, but she knows enough to know Frank can be that someone for her. She doesn’t know what that means, what she _wants_ it to mean, but it feels like a start.

It feels like progress. Feels like possibility.

“I’m kinda glad you’re supposedly my boyfriend, y’know,” she mumbles against his sweater, right as she’s on the brink of drifting off.

And Frank just chuckles under his breath, and pulls her close, and holds her until she sleeps.  


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the Trump joke in here was.... funnier before he got elected. Now it's just sad. And cringeworthy. But I was too lazy to take it out and re-write the scene. So.
> 
> Meh. Other than that this is probably my favorite chapter of this fic ;P Enjoy!!

Laurel falls asleep on him for hours.

He doesn’t dare move a muscle, lest he disturb her, even though his entire right arm goes all numb and pins-and-needles within the first thirty minutes, and her elbow is jabbing his ribs. He doesn’t care. Wouldn’t wake her and disturb this moment for the world.

He never thought he’d have this, again: have Laurel with him, calling him her boyfriend, trusting him, looking at him and not seeing a monster, not seeing a liar; just seeing _him_. He’d thought they were ruined – and they were, probably for good, after Lila. This all seems too good to be true.

_Because it is_ , that voice of his conscience snaps at him, small but mighty and twice as insistent as before. And Frank’s honestly really fucking bewildered as to when he suddenly acquired a conscience, again.

It’s from being around her. Must be. Laurel has never been innocent, or naïve; he knows that, knows who her father is, what she’s had to endure, but Laurel now… She’s all she was before the murders, before getting mixed up with Annalise had pretty much ruined her life. She can be that hopeless idealist she was, once, the one who believed the law and the justice system were there to help others, the do-gooder who wanted to change the world for the better, bright-eyed and full of hope before all the death had snuffed those bright eyes out.  

She has a chance, now. To get out, start over. Be normal. He’ll be damned if he or anyone else takes that chance away from her, even if he has to lie with every breath he takes, about Sam and Lila and all of it. Even if he has to go to the ends of the earth to make sure she never finds out, keep her in the dark.

Even if one day he has to watch her walk out of his life all over again, go on to bigger and better things.

He will do that for her, when the time comes. Step aside. He won’t ask her to stay. He refuses to be the one who’d hold her back, ever. They’re living on borrowed time now – Frank knows that; time he shouldn’t even have, time he doesn’t _deserve_ to have. This situation of theirs, his lies, can’t go on indefinitely, no matter how much he wants to believe it can.

And suddenly this all feels wrong, lying here with her. This isn’t right. None of this is how he’d pictured it. He’d wanted forgiveness from Laurel – all of Laurel. The Laurel he’d fallen in love with; the Laurel who knew what he’d done and could maybe, somehow, find it in herself to love him anyway.

Not this Laurel. Not this Laurel without her memories who doesn’t know him, doesn’t know _herself_ , has no idea who he really is and why she should run in the opposite direction the first chance she gets, far, far away from him. It’s a twisted fucking kind of forgiveness; one she doesn’t even know she’s given him because she has no idea there’s anything _to_ forgive. Every second he’s here he’s as good as deceiving her.

He guesses he’s going to have to try to live with that.

After a while he manages to sneak out from underneath Laurel, tucking the comforter around her and leaving her to rest, his mind a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions whipping around inside his skull at a thousand miles per hour. He tries to quell that voice of his conscience, silence it, and somehow manages to stomp it down well enough, though that nagging, uneasy feeling still remains in his gut no matter how deep he buries it.

He’ll live with it. He has to.

In the meantime, he has stuff he has to figure out – a hell of a lot of stuff, most of it pertaining to his employment, or current lack thereof. He has savings; he was smart with his money while he still had a regular paycheck coming in, and it’s enough of a cushion to pay his rent through the end of the year and probably into the next. The chances of Annalise taking him back now are slim to none – closer to _none_. He needs to figure something out, eventually.

He will not touch the blood money again. He won’t; that one time had been an exception, a lapse in judgement. He’d sooner work the nightshift as a fry cook at McDonald’s than touch a penny of it, and if it comes down to it he supposes that’s exactly what he’ll do. Maybe another firm will hire him – but he’s quick to remember that although he has experience, he has no college degree, and most certainly no _law_ degree, and subsequently no job prospects, unless on the off chance some other unscrupulous defense attorney in Philly is looking for a hired gun.

So.

Chances of that happening are slim to none too. Maybe this whole fast food thing isn’t shaping up to be such a ludicrous idea after all.

Second? He needs to call his parents. Knows they’re probably worried sick, especially his ma; he’d been gone almost a month, with no contact, no note, no warning, no nothing. He needs to see if he can get Laurel to go outside. To the park, maybe, or to the office; her visit with the rat pack seemed to have gone well enough to warrant another. He needs to make sure that, under no circumstances, do any of them ever mention Sam, or Sinclair, or Lila to her.

He has a lot to do. A fuck of a lot. Quite possibly he may be entirely screwed, and in way, way over his head. But that’s a problem for another day, Frank reminds himself.

All of those things are problems for another day.

He putters around her apartment for a while, not really having anything to do and having cleaned everything he can until her chrome sink is shiny and spotless, and her cupboards have been meticulously organized and re-organized twice. He tries to watch television, playing it on mute to keep from waking Laurel, but Maury isn’t half as interesting when he can’t understand a word they’re saying, and so he gives up after a while, switching it off. He runs to the store, buys a few bags of groceries and other things he thinks she might need, and when he gets back she’s surprisingly still out like a light.

He wonders how many pills she’s taking, if she’s taking them with the express purpose of knocking herself out to escape the world. Thinks maybe he should check – then stops himself. He is not her keeper. Not her caretaker. He knows how much she would hate him fawning over her, and so he resists the urge, instead setting about putting away the groceries.

Half an hour later is when she finally comes rushing out of the bedroom, oddly fast and frantic

“Tell me this is a joke.”

He hears Laurel before he sees her, voice coming from the end of the hallway, and he turns from his seat at the counter just in time to see her stalk in, clutching her laptop in her good hand, looking panicked. Immediately, irrationally, his mind starts jumping to worst case scenarios – that is, until she thrusts the screen in his face, and he sees the article she has open in her browser.

DONALD TRUMP ACCEPTS REPUBLICAN NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT.

“Frank,” she breathes, almost looking like she’s on the verge of tears. “Frank, please tell me this isn’t happening.”

Oh.

It hits him, then. He guesses he’d been too self-centered before to realize that their relationship isn’t the only thing Laurel doesn’t remember; she also doesn’t remember any world events that’d happened in the past year at all, and he’d done an admittedly shitty job of catching her up while she’d been confined to her hospital bed. Somehow she hadn’t stumbled across this tidbit of news until now, and her eyes are so wide that the whites of them have swallowed up her pupils, her lower lip threatening to start quivering any moment now.

Okay. So this might take some delicate explaining.

“Uh… no,” he says, shifting a bit awkwardly. “That’s real. Unfortunately.”

Laurel exhales, setting down the computer and shaking her head, placing her hand on her temple. “Oh my God. Oh my _God_ , this can’t be happening.”

Frank remembers something the doctor told him, about trying to keep her from getting too upset, and reaches out to her, lips pressed into a thin line. “Hey, Laurel, it’s okay-”

“This is _not_ okay!” she cries, backing away, clearly distraught – and honestly, he doesn’t blame her. “This is not okay on, like, a thousand different levels, Frank! H-how did this happen? How could-”

“Look. Hey, calm down,” he says, moving in close and thankfully getting her to stop pacing. “How’d it happen? America’s a bunch a… pissed-off bigoted assholes. But, I mean, look on the bright side, he probably isn’t gonna win-”

“You don’t know that!” she exclaims, and heaves a sigh, making her way across the room, plopping down on the couch, and covering her face with one hand. “Oh my God, I-I forget _one year_ and the whole world goes to hell.”

“Not the whole world,” he tries to soothe her, taking a seat at her side. “Some… good stuff’s happened too. It’s not all bad news.”

“Like what?”

“Uh…” Shit. Shit, he’s drawing a blank. “Uh, there was a spaceship thing that made it to Jupiter, to orbit. Some big deal, or somethin’. Not with people on it, but… that was a good thing.”

Laurel just looks at him. “I don’t think that cancels out the fact that _Donald Trump_ could be our next president.”

“Yeah,” he relents. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But – hey. There’s other good things, too.” He thinks for a moment, then nods toward the hallway. “C’mon, get dressed. I wanna show you something.”

She knits her eyebrows together, but rises to stand when he does. “What?”

“A place… where a lotta good happened, with you and me,” he answers, and grins. “Some other stuff, too. But mostly good.”

_A lotta good. A hell of a lotta bad._ Frank makes up his mind, in that instant. He knows where he wants to go, where he wants to take her.

Back to the start.

 

~

 

The sun has gone down on the law office of Annalise Keating when Frank pulls up to the curb and puts his car into park.

There’s no car in the driveway, no lights visible from the street. Annalise isn’t there. He’d known she wouldn’t be; it’s the second Tuesday of the month at eight o’clock, the designated night for her bi-weekly departmental meetings at Middleton. They have an hour or so before she’ll be back, he figures. Give or take.

Plenty of time.

“Is this where we worked?” Laurel asks as she steps out of the car, frowning up at the old blue and white Victorian house; outwardly charming to her, probably, but ominous to Frank, a veritable house of horrors. Even just seeing it makes his stomach twist, a little.

He thinks for a moment this might be a mistake. A colossal fuck-up, if he brings her here and suddenly she remembers everything, remembers Sam, remembers Rebecca. He may unintentionally ruin everything right this moment – but there was bad here and there was good, _so much_ good. If it weren’t for this place he never would’ve met Laurel, and he figures he has to give it some credit for that, at least, and he can’t control what she remembers anyway; good _or_ bad.

But he can try to help her remember the good. It’s all he can do.

He shrugs the troubling feeling off, and nods, circling around the car and heading for the porch. “Yeah. Whole lotta memories here.”

Luckily his key still works when he presses it into the lock on the front door; he wouldn’t have put it past Annalise to get her locks changed for the sole purpose of keeping him out. They step inside into the foyer, and Frank leads her past the second door down the hallway, before they finally reach the open space of the living room, where he flips on the lights, illuminating the room around them. It’s exactly like Frank left it, more than a month ago; nothing is so much as a hair out of place, as far as he can tell. The office still has that same musty smell, like old wood and dust and books. All at once he can’t shake how eerie it feels to be there, like coming home to some twisted, fucked-up sort of home.

Like coming home to a home that isn’t his anymore, and to a family that cast him out.

“This is it,” he says, turning to her with a cheerless grin. “Where all the magic happens.”

Laurel doesn’t say anything, at first. Clad in jean shorts and a tank top, she just steps inside behind him, glancing around with curious eyes and making a slow circle around the room as she explores, like she’d done to her apartment; taking it all in, not saying a word, the ever-observant wallflower, all slim, sinewy arms and limber legs, her every movement as graceful and flowing as a dancer’s.

She walks past the stairs, into the living room, then into the open area outside Annalise’s office with Bonnie’s desk. She stops now and then, looking at pictures on the walls, flipping idly through case files scattered about, admiring Bonnie’s knick knacks, every so often looking back at him and meeting his eyes, as if checking to make sure he’s still there. When she finally completes her loop and comes to a stop before him again in the doorway of the living room, she shakes her head, no flicker of recognition on her face, no sudden, horrified realization of the things that’d happened here. No nothing.

And that’s okay. Slow and steady, he thinks again. All in good time.  

“Nothing,” she says, not exactly morose but obviously far from happy about the fact, either. Her lips pinch downward into a little frown. “It’s a nice house, though.” They stand in silence for a moment, before she looks up at him. “What was it you wanted to show me?”

He gives a shrug. “I dunno. Take you on a tour, back in time. This is where we met.”

Laurel raises an eyebrow, a hesitant grin playing at her lips. “Right here?”

“Yeah. First time we talked. First time… you got pissed at me. Called me a misogynistic ass.”

She scoffs, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “Yeah, well, you sound like you deserved it.”

“I did.” He gives her a cheeky grin. “I knew I liked you then. But hey – next up, though? The foyer.”

He makes his way down the hallway toward it, and Laurel follows, quipping, “This is a very scenic tour.”

He looks back at her, winks. “It’s the history of us. A romance for the ages. You’ll love it.”

Frank pushes past the stain glass door and stops in the middle of the little foyer, turning to her again. Laurel trails behind him like a silent sentinel, body folding in on itself a bit. Her flip flops make a faint clacking sound on the hardwood as she walks, and halts in her tracks when she notices he’s stopped, waiting for him to explain the significance of this room to her as well.

“Here?” he starts, smirking. “We had our first kiss, here.”

Laurel raises an eyebrow, sounding a bit sarcastic. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that all I get?” she teases, though she does sound half-serious. “Or are you planning on elaborating?”

That gets a chuckle out of Frank. She hasn’t lost her sense of humor, that’s for sure, and it makes him so irrationally happy to know that.

“Wasn’t really romantic or anything. You did something stupid, told a juror on our case about nullification to save our client, this kid who’d killed his abusive piece of shit pops. The jury was gonna convict, and you wanted to save him. Could’ve screwed us all, gotten Annalise disbarred, what you did, but… You were so sure it was right. And, I mean, I knew you were, too. But I was still pissed. And you were pissed back, at me.”

Laurel looks amused. “We were pissed at each other pretty often, sounds like.”

“Added to the sexual tension.”

She laughs, casting her eyes downward in the most entrancing way; in a way that leaves him all stupidly breathless and jittery. “How’d it happen? The actual kiss.”

“We were goin’ back and forth. On and on. You thanked me for picking you, sarcastic and all. For ‘saving’ you. You said… something ‘bout how I knew some cliché girl from Brown would never screw me. And then I said I’d never wanna screw you. Which was a lie. Worst lie I ever told.” He pauses, takes a step closer. He deepens his voice, eyes fixed on her, hypnotized. There’s a palpable shift in the air, and he swears he sees Laurel’s pupils dilate, the tiniest bit. “Nobody kissed anybody first, we just… came together. Didn’t force it. It felt natural. It was angry, and you were grabbin’ me and I was grabbin’ you all over the place. It was… It was a hell of a good kiss, honestly.”

The light is dim, but he can see that Laurel’s cheeks are flushed red, and her tongue darts out between her lips to lick them, dampening them, making them so damn kissable right then that it takes every lick of self-control Frank has in him not to grab her and pull her against him and reenact that kiss right now; that glorious, angry, hotter than hell _kiss_. The kiss that’d started everything.

The kiss that’d made him realize, for the first time, just how far gone and hopelessly infatuated with her he was. That kiss that’d been his sweet, sweet doom.

“Yeah?” she breathes, and swallows, and he swears to God she goes a shade redder. They’re close – not overly so, but close enough that there’s tension and heat between them, the air alive with sparks, jumping, his veins pulsing like a grid of electric wires beneath his skin. “And… after?”

“After? You pushed me off. Told me you had a boyfriend and walked away.”

Confusion flickers in her eyes. “I had a boyfriend?”

Kan. Honest to God, Frank had almost forgotten Kan’s existence entirely; he was a footnote, insignificant, barely worth mentioning – even though Frank can remember being so jealous of him at times early on that his blood had boiled.

“Yeah. Name was Kan. He worked at legal aid, real do-gooder. Lot like you.” He pauses. “You guys drifted apart, never had time to see each other. You said you were the one who ended it.”

“Oh.” Laurel takes a moment to process that. “Did I do it because of you?”

"I don't know. Probably. You never really told me."

They’re close. There are a million thoughts racing through Frank’s head, yet the only clear one he can discern is how _close_ Laurel is, how she’s looking at him exactly like she’d looked at him the night they’d first kissed, just as delectable, just as much of a vision – somehow even more now. He wants to kiss her, _God_ he wants to. The thought runs in and out of his mind, stampeding, insistent. He wants to kiss her, feel her lips on his, listen to her endearing little squeals and hums against his mouth. He wants it so bad it kills him – but he refrains, stands still as a statue.

He won’t do it.

He doesn’t think Laurel would push him away; he knows how she looks when she wants to be kissed, and that same look is mirrored on her face right then – but he won’t do it. Can’t. He won’t be the one to make the first move; he’d promised himself that. Promised he would give her time, and let her make up her mind about them when that time was up, if she decided she wanted something more. She may very well, now. She may want him to kiss her, and it fucking kills him to do it but he doesn’t, knows she’ll have to do it first, if it happens at all.

She has the power. She has everything, his entire goddamn heart clutched in her dainty little hands, hers to do with as she pleases. And he won’t do it.

After a moment, he clears his throat a bit awkwardly and gestures to the front door. “Uh, third stop? Front porch.”

They make their way out onto the front porch, into the stillness of the night. It’s early summer, and the evenings are still cool enough to be pleasant, with a gentle breeze in the air, the sounds of the city and campus a far-off hum around them. Sirens blare in the distance, somewhere across town. A few people are out and about – mostly students, it looks like. It’s peaceful; the first bit of true peace Frank thinks he’s had in forever. Here with Laurel.

Here, back in a simpler time.

He walks over to the railing and leans his weight back against it. Laurel does the same, and glances sideways at him when he doesn’t say anything for a minute, just lets the chirping of the crickets and birdsong and chorus of June bugs wash over them in droves.  

“What happened here?” she asks, finally.

“Here?” He grins again, eyes dancing. “We had our first time, here.”

Laurel freezes. “We – we _what_?”

“Our first time,” he repeats. “Right here on this porch.”

Laurel just stares at him, a smile threatening to pull at her lips, which she repeatedly tries to beat down into submission. “You’re lying to me.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Oh my God,” she breathes, and laughs. “Oh my _God_ , we actually did that? _Here_?”

“You bet. You got a bit of an exhibitionist streak in you.”

“What was I _thinking_?” she blurts out, looking so adorably stunned that it makes him melt. “What, was this angry hate sex too?”

“Nah.” He shakes his head, suddenly growing serious. “It was, uh… a couple days after we kissed. I kept flirtin’ with you around the office. You were trying to make yourself stay away from me, so eventually you just flat-out told me to my face you didn’t like me. You didn’t let me down easy, I can tell you that much.”

He chuckles. Beside him, Laurel grins, a strand of hair blowing in her face.

“And then you… started thinking about quttin’. Going to work with your boyfriend at legal aid, to get away from me. You probably figured it was for your own good. Maybe it was. But I stopped you here, what was supposed to be your last day before you quit.” He lowers his voice, meeting her eyes. A low, sweet ache settles heavy in his chest. “I told you not to leave. Not to… throw away an amazing opportunity like that ‘cause of me. I said it was a stupid kiss, and yeah, I thought about you all the time but that it didn’t mean anything, that I’d get over it…”

He drifts off. Laurel urges him on. “What’d I say?”

“You said you didn’t want me to get over it.” He stops for a moment, lips pressed into a thin line, and looks forward at the house, away from her. “Sex wasn’t angry. It was… slow. Or, I mean, as slow as you wanna go when you’re havin’ sex where anyone could walk by and see.” A pause. The memories light a fire in his belly, which catches and spreads throughout him; not a furious burn, but a damn insistent one. The memories are explicit but he keeps his words tame, gentle. “It was here, right on the railing. I lifted you up. Kissed you. And it was… it was good.”

“Just good?”

“Amazing,” he says, caving without hesitation, playing right into her hands. “You always were.”

There’s another moment of silence, and it isn’t uncomfortable, not in the least. Laurel basks in his words and he lets her, stares at her, strands of hair blowing in her face, which is only barely illuminated by the porchlight, skin glowing orange-gold. Suddenly it feels like he’s watching himself from some distant alternate dimension where everything went wrong, and now he’s in _this_ dimension and everything is right again, the balance of the world restored, the planets realigned.

He’s gone back in time. He’s been here before. _They’ve_ been here before. He might as well be the man he was almost a year ago, standing out on this porch telling her not to go, telling her he thought about her all the time, offering his heart up for her to take. In many ways he’s still that man; in many ways, so many ways, she’s still that girl. It’s as if the time in between now and then never happened at all, and they’ve traveled in reverse, and now everything is simple, again.

Everything is how it should be.

After a while, Frank stands, releasing a breath. “And that concludes the tour. So see? There’s good stuff that did happen. You and me. We happened.” _And we were good. Great. And I loved you._

_And I still love you. I will love you ‘til the day I die._

Laurel gets to her feet too, and slowly makes her way over to him, until they’re just as close as they were before – closer, even, so close it’s enough to drive him crazy, enough to make his heart lock up like a stupid little faulty machine in his chest. She looks up at him, and even through the darkness her eyes glitter, a tentative smile playing at those lips of hers. She makes a soft humming noise, not for any real reason he can discern, and pauses, seeming to be contemplating something, before the gears behind her eyes click and she makes up her mind.

And then suddenly, without warning, Laurel raises herself up onto the tips of her toes, inches closer, and tenderly, very tenderly, press a kiss to the scruff of his cheek.

His heart stops, when she does. The world stops. The breeze stops. The crickets stop their chirping. Everything around him grinds to a halt, all melting away, fading into the blackness surrounding them, and suddenly all that exists in that instant is Laurel; Laurel, kissing him, eyes flicking up to him, timid but sure of what she’s doing. It only lasts a second, hardly anything more than a ghosting of her lips across his skin, but to Frank it’s a century and it’s a second, and it’s everything. It feels surreal.

He’d never thought he’d have this again. He’d _known_ he never would, as a matter of fact. Everything takes on a foggy, dream-like quality. This must be a dream, he’s sure. A beautiful dream that he’ll wake from any moment, wake up alone in that shitty, lonely motel room again, wake up without her. Wake up knowing he’d lost her, for good.

But he doesn’t have to pinch himself to know this is real. Blessedly real. Dreams and reality have merged into this moment, this perfect moment, and this is _real_.

“Thank you,” Laurel breathes, after a moment. She smiles, and it tugs on his heartstrings, probably comes close to ripping the thing right out of his chest altogether. “That was very… enlightening.”

“Yeah, well,” he murmurs, barely able to form the words. “Glad I could deliver.”

They walk back to the car, not long afterward, cherishing the silent stillness of the night and each other’s company. He opens the door for her, and she steps inside, and she lets him take her home just like she used to.

And you can’t go back in time. Frank knows this. But they have. They’ve defied all odds. Done the impossible. They’ve gone back in time – to a time so much simpler, so easy, without the taint of blood and death. To a time when Laurel was his, when they were nothing more than two people, falling for each other. Simple. Nothing more.  

You can’t go back in time, but Frank has, _they_ have, and he’s not losing this again. He’d sooner die.


	9. Chapter 9

The following Monday, she steps inside her criminal law lecture with Annalise Keating for the first time.

Well, for the first time post-accident, at least. That’s the way Laurel has started to think of this new life of hers, with that crucial delineation of pre-accident and post-accident. It makes things less muddled, if only slightly; sorting them into categories, packing them away in neat little boxes. Nothing is simple now, but somehow, some way, that helps.

Technically, she knows going back to class now serves no real purpose; more than likely she’s going to have to repeat this year anyway, on account of her forgetting everything, but she’s also convinced that if she sits around cooped up in her apartment one more day she’s going to lose it; actually, quantifiably lose it.

She needs to get out. Be normal again. She doesn’t feel normal, sure. But she’ll fake it until she makes it.

Hopefully.

So she puts on a sleeveless red waterfall blouse and grey jeans, doing her hair and half-assing her makeup. Frank drives her, since she can’t very well drive with one broken arm, and the doctors had warned her away from operating any kind of motor vehicle for a while what with the possibility she could black out and get herself in yet _another_ car accident. Frank seems worried, very obviously trying to resist the urge to fuss over her, concerned but not wanting to voice his concerns aloud. He offers to walk her to class, too, carry her books like they’re in high school, but she rebukes him as he puts the car into park in front of the building, more sharply than she means to.

The world already made one hell of a solid effort to take her out. She thinks she can survive with only one functional arm for the time being.

By some miracle, she manages to find the brick building housing the college of law, and hurries inside the lecture hall just in time to see a flood of students migrating to their seats, while a woman with a leather bag stalks into the front of the room, dark skin and dark eyes and terrifying, piercing glare. She can only assume this is the Great Annalise Keating she’s heard so much about, and immediately she has the urge to compress herself down into a tiny ball and hide herself away in some little remote nook or cranny in this room, where no one can spot her. She ends up settling on the next best option, and takes a seat in the very back row, but finds herself confronted shortly after by a blonde girl who gives her a funny look and says that seat belongs to her.

Okay. Assigned seats. She didn’t realize that was still a thing in law school.

She _also_ has no idea where her seat is, and the fact shouldn’t make her as anxious as it does, but coupled with all the new faces and deafening voices around her, she feels overwhelmed, out of nowhere; suffocated, sensory overload of every one of her senses. For the thousandth time she’s acutely aware of how she no longer belongs in this world, how unwelcome she is, and she swears she can feel everyone’s eyes on her, staring like she’s a freak, an outcast, and maybe she is, now.

She looks for Wes or Michaela or Connor, praying desperately they’ll come to her rescue – but she can’t find any of them in the sea of faces, and so she resorts to standing mutely in the middle of the steps, watching the crowd thin out bit by bit, eyes scanning the room and frantically searching for a vacant seat. As the last few stragglers blend into the crowd, she’s left standing there dumbly, clutching her textbook in her good hand, fidgeting and wanting to simultaneously disappear and die – and then, finally, Annalise Keating takes notice of her.

She’d expected to be yelled at, berated, but her voice is warm, or at least warmer than she’d anticipated. She thinks she may even give her something that on anyone else’s face might be a smile, though it stops just short of being one on hers.

“Miss Castillo,” she says, and motions to a row of seats down toward the front, off to the left section of the room. “Glad to have you back. Your seat is over there.”

She smiles, and relaxes. Manages to remind herself that she does, in fact, belong here, and makes her way over to her row, taking her seat.

The rest of the lecture passes in a blur. She spends it alternating between trying to take notes on some case she doesn’t understand, zoning out, and watching Annalise speak with a strange sort of fascination. She’s articulate. Intimidating. Charismatic. Intelligent. Everything Frank and the others had said she’d be and more. She carries herself in a way Laurel hasn’t seen many people carry themselves, in a way she almost doesn’t know how to describe. There’s a sort of unassailable fierceness about her; confidence, stopping just short of cockiness. She looks like she believes she could take over the world without so much as chipping a nail – and Laurel doesn’t doubt that for a second, honestly.

She figures she probably could.

The hour passes. Class comes to an end, and Laurel collects her books up a bit clumsily, hoping to be able to sneak out before Michaela or Wes or any of the others notice her. It’s not that she doesn’t want to see them – even though that _is_ kind of the case – but she’s too exhausted and overwhelmed to handle carrying on a pleasant conversation with them. Everything is ten times as taxing as she remembers it used to be, some eternal haze hanging over her, exacerbated even more by the pain meds, which at times make it almost impossible for her to keep her eyes open.

She wants to go home, if she’s being honest. Sleep. Do nothing _but_ sleep, ever again, for the rest of the year. Maybe the rest of her life.

It isn’t Michaela or Wes’s voice she hears that stops her, though. It comes from the front of the room, calling out after her and cutting through the air.

“Can I see you for a moment, Miss Castillo?”

She turns, not altogether surprised to hear her name but very much surprised by the source: Annalise Keating, standing up front collecting her papers and sliding them back into her bag. Laurel hesitates, then takes a step forward, making her way to the front of the room and coming to a stop before the table behind which Annalise stands. She looks up at her after a moment and stops what she’s doing, folding her arms and appearing to make an attempt to look nonthreatening.

“I’m glad to see you here,” she says, finally. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back. You’re feeling all right? Keeping up with the material?”

Laurel shifts her weight from one leg to another. “Uh, well… I don’t remember any of it, actually. From the past year. I’ll probably have to retake this class. And all my other classes.”

Annalise’s expression is stoic, eyes flinty, though her words could be construed as kind. “I’m sorry to hear that. But you’re smart; you always have been. You won’t let this beat you.” She pauses, looking her up and down. “Frank has been staying with you?” Laurel nods. Something flickers in Annalise’s eyes – something she can’t read, something like disapproval that she doesn’t bother to conceal. “Have he or the others told you anything about me?”

“Only that you’re… a big deal. And intimidating.” _And mildly terrifying. More than mildly._

She smirks. “And are they right?”

Laurel nods, again. Annalise’s smirk grows wider, into something warmer.

“Would you believe me if I told you you used to mouth off to me like nobody’s business?”

Laurel blinks, her stomach going sour. “I did?”

“You did.” Annalise nods, then grows abruptly serious. “That fire’s still in you. I can tell.”

A moment passes without a word between them. Laurel clears her throat, resisting the urge to fidget for the millionth time.

“They didn’t tell me you were nice,” she says, admittedly more than a little hesitant about that assessment. “You seem… nice.” _Kind of._

That earns her a snort. “Trust me, Miss Castillo, you’ll soon come to find out I am anything but.”

She opens her mouth to reply, but before she can a pair of voices sound out behind her and cut her off.  

“Laurel, hey.”

“Yo, El Castillo, what’s crackle-ackin’?”

She turns, and finds Michaela, Wes, Asher, and Connor gathered there, textbooks clutched in their hands, smiles plastered on their faces; mostly genuine, but to her they seem almost simpering, forced, phony. Still, it’s a relief to see some relatively familiar faces, and so she smiles back, eyes scanning the four of them before finally landing on Wes, who is looking at her with those gentle eyes, something deep in them she can’t decipher.

“Hey, guys,” she greets, and again lets herself relax.

“You’re back,” Michaela chirps, smiles a bit brighter. “That’s great. We didn’t know when you would be.”

Asher reaches out, a bit awkward in his chivalrousness, and offers to take her book. “Uh, here. Let me get that for you.”

“Oh, I’m g-” she starts, but before she can finish Asher swipes it out from under her arm, and so she relents with a nod. “Uh, okay. Thanks.”

“Like the first day of law school all over again, right?” Connor jokes stiffly, which earns him a glare from Michaela, and so he corrects himself hastily. “I mean – in a good way. And if you need any of our outlines to refresh, you can totally have them. Michaela’s are all… color-coded and organized and stuff.”

“For real,” Asher chimes in. “Like the da Vinci of outlines, yo.”

“We’re just about to head to the office,” Michaela tells her. “You wanna come?” Laurel doesn’t answer at first, just hesitates, and Michaela’s eyes go a bit wide, as if fearing she’s made some kind of fatal misstep, disturbed her fragile state of being. “Of course, if you don’t want to-”

“No, I’ll come,” she interrupts her, before turning around and deferring to Annalise. “If that’s all right?”

“Of course it is,” Annalise affirms, and zips her leather bag with a wry, humorless sort of grin, heading for the door. “If we’re not family by now what are we?”

The others scoff, chuckle darkly at what Laurel assumes must be some kind of joke.

She doesn’t get it. She also doesn’t ask.

 

~

 

The office looks like an entirely different place in the daylight.

Laurel can’t help but flush a little as she follows the others up the front steps onto the porch, remembering what Frank had told her, what they’d done there. She feels crazy – but a good kind of crazy, delightfully insane, and she tries not to look as flustered as she is as she makes her way into the living room and takes a seat in one of the armchairs, mimicking Michaela and Connor because she has no idea what to do otherwise. Wes takes a seat in the chair next to her, immediately picking up a file from a nearby stack and plopping it into his lap, and everyone else follows suit. No one spares her a glance – as if they’ve forgotten she has no idea what they’re doing – and after a minute she leans toward Wes, frowning.

“What’re we looking for?” she whispers, and takes ahold of one of the files on the stack too.

His head snaps in her direction. “Oh, uh, these are our client’s tax returns. He was-”

“-Arrested on charges of embezzlement,” a softer voice comes from the doorway, interrupting him. Laurel turns, and finds a petite, mousy woman with close-cropped blonde hair standing there, clad in a pale pink cardigan and knee-length skirt; very clearly not a student. She looks mousy but there’s a certain hardness to her too, a storm behind her eyes, her jaw set firmly. Laurel thinks for a second that she looks older than she should. “We’re looking through his tax returns to prove he was framed by his business partner, but I have other work for you. I’ve got case files that need alphabetizing.”

Laurel doesn’t ask her name, or protest being relegated to doing something that sounds very much like busywork, or even nod; she just gets up, sets aside her file, and follows her into the next room, where the woman has placed a few large cardboard boxes with folders in them on an old wooden desk. She comes to a stop beside it and nods down at them, gesturing for her to take over.

“We alphabetize by client last name, which is written on the tabs,” she explains, then takes a step back. “Go nuts.” The woman stops, abruptly, and turns to her, giving her a little smile. “I’m Bonnie, by the way.”

“Bonnie,” she echoes, and musters up a grin to send back. “Yeah, I think Frank told me about you.”

“He better have,” she quips, then glances at the set of frosted glass doors behind her, lowering her voice. “Just… don’t mention his name to Annalise. In fact it’d be best if you don’t talk about him here at all.”

She frowns. “Why? He said he got fired, but…”

Bonnie hesitates, wearing a look she can’t decipher; she seems to be unable to read anyone these days, like everyone’s faces and expressions are scrambled, blurry, and it’s just as confusing as it is impossibly frustrating. Finally, she shakes her head, sighs, and lowers her eyes, folding her arms.

“It’s a long story. I think that’s for him to tell.” Bonnie is somber for a moment, before she shrugs it off and again turns to go, features relaxing into another weak smile. “We’re happy to have you back.”

_I think that’s for him to tell._ The words make Laurel furrow her brow as she goes to work, sorting through the files and pulling them out of the box to place into stacks. She has no clue what that means, what could possibly be so bad he’d not only gotten fired for it, but also become _persona non grata_ at his former workplace. He’d been vague about his job description – oddly so. _Handling things with discretion_ , was how he’d put it, and she’d known how shady that’d sounded but hadn’t chosen to pry.

She doesn’t think he’s lying to her; she doesn’t know why he would. But she also isn’t sure he’s telling her the whole truth.

Laurel puts the thoughts out of her head and focuses on the task at hand – which turns out to be so mind-numbingly boring it’s almost soothing. She loses herself in the smooth slips of the paper beneath her fingertips, every now and then pausing to peruse one of the files out of curiosity. From what she can tell Annalise Keating is every bit the big shot Frank had said she was – high-profile businessmen, murderers, white-collar crime, insider trading; cases with nationwide attention on them, a few of which she thinks she remembers hearing about before she’d come to law school.

She has no clue how she ended up working for a defense attorney, defending the worst of the worst, unscrupulous and ruthless and pretty much contradicting every single line item in her moral code – but she’s rolling with it. Figures she just has to, these days.

Half an hour into her work, something catches her eye out of her peripheral vision. Movement. Someone approaching, fast, and she barely even has time to look up before Asher strides up to her and thrusts something into her face: a statue made of what looks like bronze, of a blindfolded Lady Justice, holding her scales in one hand and a sword in the other. It’s an intricate little thing, seemingly innocuous enough, but the moment she sees it Laurel backs off and frowns at him, bewildered.

“What’s that?” she asks, caught off guard.

“Do you, like, remember this at all?” Asher asks, cryptically, and leans forward like he’s trying to lead her. “Does it… spark any memories? Ring a bell?”

Her frown grows deeper. “No, what is it-”

“ _Asher_ you idiot! Put that down,” Michaela hisses, and comes stalking across the room in what must be record time, snatching it out of his hands and sending him a withering glare. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing!” he exclaims, holding up his hands. “I just wanted to see if it maybe could make her remember, _yeesh_ -”

She knits her eyebrows together, eyeing the pair with suspicion, well aware she’s not being told something but having no idea precisely what that _something_ is. “What’s going on? What is that?”

Michaela hesitates. Hesitates, very conspicuously, like Bonnie had, like she’s trying to choose her words carefully, figure out whether or not she should tell her. Suddenly Laurel can’t help but have the sense that _no one_ is telling her the truth, and it makes her blood boil, makes her want to scream in frustration, to know that she _should_ know the truth, _did_ know, once, and now… Now, knows nothing.

“Nothing,” Michaela says, finally, lowering the statue down to her side. “It’s… it’s nothing. Asher’s just being a _dumbass_. Right, Asher?”

“Uh, yeah,” Asher blurts out, a little too quickly and nervously to be believable. “Just a joke – totally. I’m the worst, yo. Everyone’ll… everyone’ll tell you that. Um. Yeah.” He pauses, and stiffens, letting Michaela all but tug him back into the living room by the ear. “I’ll just… let you get back to work.”

With that Asher leaves, and after a moment she does, though the conversation leaves a bit of a bad taste in her mouth, an unsettling feeling in her gut, like something is gravely wrong but she can’t pin it down. She tries to shake the feeling but it remains, heavy and low in her stomach as she goes back to work. Annalise lets her off at three but keeps the others, and though Laurel insists she can stay too she tells her to go home and get some rest – which burns a little, though she knows she means well.

She’s walking across campus to the parking lot where Frank had said he’d meet her when she sees it.

A flyer, hanging from a bulletin board outside one of the buildings. Old. Stained and wavy from being rained on, most likely. One of the corners is torn off, and it looks like it should’ve been taken down months ago – but the instant it catches Laurel’s eye it stills her, sends a jolt through her system.

HAVE YOU SEEN ME? is printed across the top in bold red lettering, and beneath it is a picture: a girl with red hair, giving the camera a tiny, lopsided, barely-there grin. Beautiful. Bright eyes and soft features – and there’s something about those eyes and features that seems almost… familiar, in a way. Eerily familiar. She’s never seen this girl in her life – Lila Stangard, the poster reads, missing since August 30th, 2015, 21 years-old and last seen at a sorority party – but suddenly Laurel can’t shake the sense that she knows her, somehow.

Or used to know her, maybe, in her other life.

_Lila Stangard._

She reaches up, removing the pushpin and taking the crinkled flyer in her hands, smoothing it out. She murmurs the name under her breath, replays it in her head half a dozen times, all the while knowing that she _knows_ it somehow, but can’t remember how; another thing she can’t pin down, floating just out of reach. She tries to wrestle something down, grab hold of it, thinks so hard she clenches her jaw and makes her teeth ache, but time and time again she comes up with nothing.

Nothing but the eyes of Lila Stangard staring up at her. She swears she’s seen them before. Seen _her_.

_Knows_ her.

Perplexed and more than a little troubled for the thousandth time today, she folds the poster in half and tucks it into her bag, hurrying over to Frank’s parked car and hopping in. She makes herself smile for him, but every time she blinks she swears she can see the face of Lila Stangard flashing behind her eyelids like it’s been burned there, red hair and teasing grin and green eyes asking _, Have you seen me? Have you seen me?_

And she _has_. She’s familiar. A stranger. But she knows her; a tiny but persistent voice from some place deep inside her tells her that she does, and she’s not inclined to believe she’s going crazy – at least not yet.

After a while Frank, sensing something is amiss, tears his eyes from the road and glances over at her, brow creased with worry. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Laurel answers, and stuffs the poster a little deeper into her purse, out of sight. “I’m fine.”


	10. Chapter 10

It’s midday on a Tuesday when he receives the summons.

“She wants to see you.”

Bonnie calls him to deliver it, sounding just as shocked as he is – though some part of Frank, buried deep and hopelessly foolish and weaved with the last few threads of his optimism, had been wondering if Annalise would call him back to their twisted little home sooner or later, after Laurel’s accident, after the month he’d spent on the lam. Bonnie doesn’t say what she wants; she doesn’t seem to know, and most likely he figures Annalise hasn’t told her.

 _She wants to see you_ , is all he gets. _Come to the office today. 1:30._

And he’ll go. Of course he’ll go, like a dog crawling back to its master no matter how many times it gets kicked.

He forgoes bringing some kind of weapon. He doesn’t think Annalise will try to do him any real bodily harm, though he supposes with her he can never be totally sure – and it’s not like he wouldn’t deserve it, anyway. Thankfully Laurel is in class until three, and so he doesn’t have to make up an excuse for the cold sweat glistening on his brow, the faint tremble in his hands as he buttons his waistcoat and slicks his hair. He grabs his keys, and drives to the office with a sense of impending doom looming heavy over him like a raincloud, festering in his gut, cold and sinister. His mind starts running scenarios before he can shut it down – worst case scenarios, mostly, all of which he’d deserve, most of which are likely to come true.

He doesn’t open the front door when he gets there, even though he knows it’s probably unlocked; instead he rings the doorbell and waits, very much cognizant of the fact that he’s an intruder in this place now. He wonders for a second if this is how Laurel had felt, returning to a life that used to be hers but now feels foreign and cold, and… wrong. It feels _wrong_ that he should be here again, when he’d been so convinced Annalise would never want to speak another word to him in her life. And maybe it is wrong, wrong that he should be here, and maybe he should turn, run while he still has the chance, and-

Bonnie answers before he can do any of that, and gives him a little cheerless grin when she pulls open the door, the corners of her eyes wrinkling. She looks older than she had before, he thinks as he takes in the sight of her, briefly. Sadder. Heavier. He’d been so sick with grief and worry at the hospital with Laurel that he’d barely bothered to look at her, really _look_ at her, but now that he does the change is striking.

“Hey,” she greets, softly, and somehow he makes himself smile back.

“Hey.”

Bonnie steps aside, wordlessly. He takes the cue and enters, and after she’s shut the door behind him they stand in the foyer together for a moment, in a silence riddled with awkwardness, with miles of distance between them, even though she’s the closest thing to a sister he’s ever had; even though he’d still do just about fucking anything in the world for her, to protect her.

But after Lila, Annalise, the time they’d spent apart… Things are different, now; the kind of different that isn’t reversible. They’d been a family but they’re a fractured, fucked-up family now, and the cracks run far too deep to ignore.

Still, Bonnie tries to, and reaches out, pulling him into a brief hug. “It’s, uh… good to see you here, again.”

“Tell me about it,” he jokes half-heartedly, as they break apart. “Never thought I’d be able to set foot here again without gettin’ a trophy to the head.”

It’s a bit of a tasteless joke, and an admittedly ill-timed one. Bonnie forces a short-lived smile but doesn’t laugh, and instead she flicks her eyes downward, shifting a bit uncomfortably, like she wants as much as he does to dispel this distance, clear the air between them, but doesn’t know how to begin – and he doesn’t, either. He has no clue what to say. Knows there’s nothing he can do.

Figures he’s probably done enough already.

“She, uh,” he begins, clearing his throat, unable to speak Annalise’s name. “She say what she wants?”

Bonnie shakes her head. “No. Something to do with Laurel, maybe. I don’t know what else she could want.”

He cracks a wry grin, trying to lighten the mood. “Should I get ready to leave in a body bag or what?”

“Just… listen to her. Don’t talk, don’t interrupt. Shut up and listen.” Bonnie pauses, pressing her lips into a thin line. “That’s my advice, at least.”

Frank nods, and goes for the door. “Shut up and listen. Roger that.”

“And Frank?” Bonnie calls out after him, stopping him in his tracks. He turns to her, and she exhales sharply, folding her arms. “It’s gonna be… hard, for her to see you. After everything. Don’t try to apologize. Don’t bring any of that up, just-”

“Shut up and listen,” he repeats, forces another grin. “I got it, Bon.”

Bonnie hesitates, for a moment, almost like she wants to say something else, but then it passes and she lets out a breath, heading for the door and leading him down the hallway. “Come on. I’ll tell her you’re here.”

With all the enthusiasm of a man approaching the executioner’s block, Frank follows, footsteps creaking on the old hardwood floor. The rest of the kids aren’t around; off running some menial errand or other from Annalise, he figures, and that’s good – he could do without seeing them today, at least.

He’s well aware he doesn’t have to do this, that he should probably turn around and walk out the door and never set foot within a ten-block radius of this office again, for his own good and the good of everyone else. But Annalise had asked for him, and her summons wasn’t a request; it was an order, plain and simple, because when Annalise Keating asks for you, _you go_ , no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Bonnie peaks her head in Annalise’s office door briefly, announcing his presence, and Frank doesn’t hear her reply but it must be something affirmative, because not long after she turns to him and nods, beckoning for him to enter. And so he does, even though he hasn’t the faintest fucking clue what he’s about to walk into. His own death, could be.

He goes anyway.

Chaos is bubbling beneath his skin as he pushes past the frosted glass door and steps in – and he swears there’s a change in temperature when he does; a veritable ten-degree drop. Her office is just like he’d remembered it, just like it’d looked the night he and Laurel had snuck in here, but with Annalise’s presence it takes on a whole other intimidating, imposing quality; becomes more than just a room, with walls that are alive and living and breathing. Frank doesn’t bother looking around the room for long, delaying the inevitable, no matter how much he wants to.

So he turns, and faces her desk – and there is Annalise, seated there with her hands folded, clad in a navy blue wrap dress, hair and makeup done-up for court. Her eyes are appraising him in silence, in that unique, unnerving way of hers, like she can see right through him, cut past every layer and crack him open and see him for what he really is beneath – like she’s always been able to do. Her features are hardened as concrete, jaw set, chin raised; he can’t detect even the faintest flicker of emotion behind her diamond-hard exterior. Annalise doesn’t move, as he comes to a stop before her desk. Barely even blinks.

Frank tries not to cower, and would like to think he succeeds – for maybe half a second.  

There’s a chair in front of her desk, but she hasn’t asked him to sit, hasn’t given him any indication that he’s welcome to do so, so he doesn’t. He stands there, arms hanging at his sides, feeling awkward and dumb and lumbering before her, and simultaneously, somehow, feeling as small as a child. Annalise looks at him, for what must be ages. Just stares, and he could handle her screaming at him maybe, but he can’t handle this – this eerie, suffocating silence. The staring. The way she’s looking at him; with disinterest, almost, like he’s a gnat buzzing around her head she’s all of two seconds away from squashing.

“You came,” is all she says, finally. “I didn’t think you would.”

Frank opens his mouth to reply, but before he can Bonnie’s words echo in his skull. _Shut up and listen. Shut up and listen._

He does just that. He shuts up, and after a moment, once it’s clear he isn’t going to say anything, Annalise sighs.

“Let me make one thing clear,” Annalise deadpans, voice sharp enough to cut. “The only reason you’re here? Is because of that girl. Because of Laurel. Because I don’t want you lying to her, and I don’t want you hurting her.” Still, Frank says nothing. Something flashes behind Annalise’s eyes like a solar flare – something dangerous. “You haven’t told her, I assume? That she helped chop up my dead husband’s body? And that you strangled a girl to death?”

He gulps, mouth going dry. “No.”

“And – what? You’re going to act like none of that ever happened now?” Annalise demands. “How long are you planning on living in that little fantasy world, Frank?”

“She can’t know,” he says, tries to urge her. “I’m just… I’m tryin’ to protect her.”

“Trying to protect her or trying to protect yourself?”

 _Both._ That’s the honest to God truth. Laurel can’t know. Can’t know, to preserve her own sanity. Can’t know, because she’s only just starting to get acclimated to this new life of hers, and finding that out, everything they’d done, would fuck her up beyond belief, maybe even more than it’d fucked her up before.

She can’t know, because she’d hate him if she did. Hate him, and leave him, and never speak to him again – and it’s selfish, so fucking selfish, but somehow, strangely, it seems like the right thing to do: protect her from the truth. And in turn, protect himself. Frank knows it’s dumb, knows _he’s_ dumb, knows it probably won’t work and he’s stupid to think it will, but he doesn’t know what else to do but cling to that hope, that faint, far-off possibility.

And so he stays silent, again, and lowers his eyes. Waits, for the oncoming storm that is Annalise Keating.

Before long, it comes raging.

“So what?” she asks. “You’re going to lie to her? Make her believe you were some kind of _great guy_ and skip off into the sunset together, and forget Lila Stangard and my son and every other terrible thing you’ve ever done?”

“That’s not-” He stops, letting out a breath. “She’s got a chance, now. Clean start. A real one. Now it’s like nothin’ ever happened. She can be normal, again.”

Annalise sneers. “How convenient for you.”

“This ain’t about me,” he blurts out, then shakes his head. “It – it is, but… It’s a second chance, for her. To get out, have a life. And I’m not gonna fuck it up, and I’m not gonna hurt her. I…” He drifts off, clenching his jaw and meeting her eyes. “I love her, Annalise. More ‘n I’ve ever loved anybody. I mean that.”

She raises a critical eyebrow, her voice rising in volume. “Oh, and you think that absolves you? Makes everything you did not matter? Is that what you think, Frank? That killing my baby and Lila and _her_ baby is somehow excusable as long as you promise not to hurt her?”

“I know it’s not okay,” he says, and his voice cracks ever so slightly, his throat locking up. “I know, none of what I did… I gotta live with that. The rest of my life, knowin’ what I did. Hatin’ myself for it. And I do. Hate myself for it, I do. But I didn’t-” His voice catches in his throat, silencing him for a moment. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, Annalise. None of it. With the bug, the car crash – I thought… you were just gonna lose the case, and-”

She shoots to her feet, feral as a tiger. “And instead they killed my son. Because of you. And then what? You’re going to stand there and tell me Sam _made_ you kill that girl because of it? That really _you_ were the victim in all this?”

“I’m not… I’m not sayin’ that-”

“You make me sick,” she snarls at him, eyes alight, burning so hot he can nearly feel them searing into him across the desk. “I meant what I said, when I said Laurel’s better off dead than living in a world with people like you. You say you want to protect her? All you’ll do is _ruin_ her. She’s a smart girl. Believe it or not, I care about her, and if you stay with her you’ll drag her down with you, and that’s the truth.”

“So what?” he manages to say, and the words are strained, hoarse. “You tellin’ me I gotta leave her, Annalise? That what you want?”

“I should,” she bites out, then relaxes somewhat and slowly, very slowly, lowers herself back down into her chair. “I should tell you to leave her, or else I tell her everything and she leaves you anyway. But I’m not gonna do that.” A pause. She flattens her lips into a line, standing down, almost relenting, but not quite. “That would hurt her more, and she’s scared. Vulnerable. So no. You get your wish. I won’t tell her. But one thing you do have to promise me?”

“Anything.”

“If she ever finds out,” Annalise tells him, voice low and measured now, but no less frigid, “or starts to remember what happened, you tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You don’t try to tell her she’s crazy, tell her she’s wrong. You tell her the truth, and if she leaves your sorry ass because of it, Frank, you _do not_ try and stop her.”

He doesn’t hesitate, no matter how much the thought of Laurel leaving again kills him, turns a dagger in his stomach. He’d lost her once; losing her again might actually do him in for good, and he knows that. And it feels inevitable, that this fool’s paradise he’s living in will one day burn to the ground around him, and Laurel will remember everything, or she’ll find out some other way, if one of the others decides to spill the beans to her. There’s no kidding himself. He’s stupid, maybe, but he’s not that stupid, and he knows what’s coming, that the time he has now is borrowed time; an hourglass turned on its head, fast running out.  

So he nods, shoulders sagging under the weight of his words. “Yeah. I promise.”

“Good,” Annalise deadpans, and lowers her eyes back to the paperwork in front of her, grabbing a pen and waving him away. “Now get out.”

He blinks. “Annalise-”

“I told you; I only asked you here because of Laurel,” she says, without so much as looking at him. “Don’t come here again.”

“That’s it?” he says, almost a bit incredulous, head spinning. “You’re just gonna-”

Finally, she looks up at him, silencing him with a withering glare. “Get out. And if you ever come here again, Frank, I’ll go to the police station, and I swear to God I’ll tell them what you did to that poor girl up on the roof of that house, and I’ll let you _rot_ on death row.”

Cold leather gloves. Warm summer breeze. Red hair. Gasping. Wheezing. Then-

Nothing.

The memories hit him quick in succession. For the longest time he’d been compartmentalizing. _Put it away_ , was what he’d told Laurel to do, and that’s what he’s done for as long as he can remember: put things away, packed them into neat little boxes and stowed them in some deep dark corner and gone on with his life, because that was the only way he’d be able to function like a semi-normal member of society.

He’d done that with Lila, too. With everything. Drugging Catherine. Burying Rebecca. Stuffing her fucking body in a suitcase. Put it away. _Put it away._

And now Annalise is looking at him, forcing him to take it all out again, examine it, drudge it all up from the depths of his subconscious where he’d buried it six feet under. Laurel had said he seems like a good guy, and he can still smell the stench of Rebecca’s decomposing body, can still see the way the life had drained from Lila’s eyes, and suddenly he thinks it should’ve been him; him, who was smothered with a plastic bag like a dog. Him, who was choked to death and dumped in a water tank.

Him, who was the dead body they wrapped in an old rug and burned in the woods.

He feels sick. Nausea roils hot in his stomach, bile threatening to rise in his throat, and he stalks out of the room after a moment, without another word. Annalise doesn’t watch him go, or call after him. He’s dead to her; she hadn’t said that, not explicitly at least, but he doesn’t have to hear her say it to know it’s the truth.

He’s dead to her, and this is not his home. This is not his family anymore.

But he knows one person who still is.

 

~

 

He cooks for Laurel that night, at her place.

Nothing fancy – just his special sauce on spaghetti and meatballs, and a salad and a nice bottle of wine from his liquor cabinet, which thankfully his landlord hadn’t pilfered during his month-long absence. He’d asked her if she wanted to go out, said he’d take her anywhere she wanted, but nowadays Laurel seems more inclined to stay in, away from the noise and hustle and bustle of the outside world. And he doesn’t mind; he’s fine with having date night in, and when he calls it that Laurel smiles, jokes that it’s technically their first date all over again, for her.

Another first, in what he’s sure will be a long, long line of them. He doesn’t mind. It feels like falling in love with her all over again, like this, and he wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world.

He’s halfway done with dinner when Laurel emerges from the bedroom. He turns when he hears her footsteps brushing against the carpet, and when he does, he swears to God he nearly stops breathing for a second, his heart seizing inside him. She’d put on a tight black dress he's seen before, stopping a few inches above her knee; not overly short, but enough to tantalize, captivate.

There’s a gold floral bib necklace around her neck, shimmering in the dim light, and her hair lays loose around her shoulders, curled gently. She’d done her makeup, somehow managing it with her one broken arm; light blush and pink lips, eyeshadow to bring out the gleam in her blue-grey eyes. With a get-up like this it’d make sense for her to wear heels but she’s forgone shoes altogether, standing there barefoot and beautiful, and it looks almost comically incongruous, maybe, but Frank doesn’t care, not for a second.

It feels like falling in love with her all over again, and he is. And he falls a little bit more right then, just looking at her – so far gone he knows he passed the point of no return long ago.

“Hey,” he greets, and she smiles, a bit shyly.

“Hey,” she says back, and nods down at her dress. “I know we’re not going out or anything, but I just wanted to… I don’t know. Dress up.” She pauses, gives a shrug. “Maybe it’s dumb-”

“No,” he says, and abandons his cooking, making his way over to her, drinking in her decadence. He’s seen her like this before, sure. All dolled-up and stunning. But it feels different now; exciting and new, all over again. It feels like a first for him too, somehow. “You’re beautiful.”

She scoffs, raising her arm to show the bright pink cast there. “Yeah, real beautiful with this thing on my arm.”

Frank squints at a few scribbles on the cast. _Get well soon yo_ , one of them reads. _From, A-man_.

“Really?” he jokes. “You let Doucheface sign your cast?”

She laughs. “Oh, yeah. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so.”

“I mean it, though,” he says, suddenly serious. “You look… wow.” Laurel rolls her eyes good-naturedly, and he glances down at this own clothes; a decidedly unglamorous black polo and jeans. “Woulda put on a suit if I’d known you were planning on lookin’ so good.”

Laurel laughs, and Frank does too, but they sober up quickly, something in the air between them shifting palpably. Laurel’s eyes search his face for a moment, and he stares at her, rapt, giddy all over like a schoolboy, before he snaps out of it and shakes his head.

“I got my special sauce cookin’,” he tells her, striding back over to the stove and dipping his spoon into the bubbling pot. “Wanna taste?”

Laurel blinks, surprised at first, but makes her way over, a playful grin on her lips. “Okay. What makes it so special, exactly?”

“’Fraid I gotta keep that to myself,” he quips, and holds out the spoon to her. “My ma’d kill me if I gave out the secret Delfino family recipe.”

Laurel looks amused, and leans in, closing her lips around the end of the spoon to taste. He holds his hand just under her chin to catch any spillage, watching her in silence, eyes dancing, as she sucks up the sauce with a quiet slurp and gives a low hum of satisfaction. Her eyes flick up to look at him, and he remembers, like a shock of electricity straight to his heart, the first time they’d done this; the night they’d gotten into that fight about her tattling to Annalise. Before the accident, before he’d told her about Lila. Back when everything had been good – and now, looking at her now, Frank knows everything can be good like that, again.

Balance has been restored in the world, and Laurel is looking at him like she used to look at him, all warm eyes and smiles and _trust_. And the love he feels right then for her beats at him, harsh as a gale, pulverizing his insides with the beautiful, devastating force of each blow.

He’s so happy right then he feels like his skin can’t contain him. Like he’ll burst right out of it at any second.

“It’s really good,” she says, after pulling away. “Maybe you weren’t all talk when you said you were a good cook after all.”

He smirks, and goes back to the stove. “Sit down. I’ll prove it to ya.”

He does just that. They eat at his counter, sharing the bottle of red wine and chatting idly. He’s made far more gourmet meals than spaghetti and meatballs, sure, but it’s a throwback to a good old classic. To that night they’d ate this, and washed the dishes together and ended up in bed afterward, how he’d gone down on her and joked about her tasting like his sauce. It makes him grin a bit ruefully, as he finishes the meal and cleans the dishes away – but he decides quickly, as he glances sideways at Laurel, who is drying each dish after he washes it and laughing softly at his dumb jokes, that there’s no point living in that past, that other world.

This is his present, now. _Their_ present.

If he’d taken her out, normally this would be the time for the long, slow romantic walk back to his car – but there’s nowhere scenic to walk in her little apartment, and so they opt to walk around the block in front of her building instead, after Laurel puts on a pair of old flip-flops with her little black dress. It’s cheesy, maybe. Very cheesy. The city isn’t the best place for any kind of romantic walk, all bright lights and exhaust fumes and concrete, but being with Laurel makes everything seem impossibly brighter, and there’s beauty in the golden glow of the streetlights that there wasn’t before; a million new stars and planets and galaxies circling overhead.

They stroll along in silence for a while, in the warm summer night, until Laurel glances over at him.

“I had a good time. A great first date.” She pauses, rubbing her lips together. “Sorry we didn’t go out anywhere, I just…”

“So what? No place like home, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Laurel sighs, folding her arms and seeming to hunch in on herself, a bit.

Frank notices. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding, but coming to an abrupt stop in a way that’s very much indicative that she _isn’t_. “Yeah, I don’t know, just, I was thinking…” Frank stops too. After a moment, Laurel meets his eyes. “I know you said you love me. And I care about you, Frank, I’m starting to, but…” His heart drops. She lowers her eyes, sighing into the night. “I don’t love you back – not right now. Not yet. And I don’t remember what we had, but it must’ve been more than this. And this, there’s no way this is enough for you. That… _I’m_ enough, now.”

“You kiddin’? ‘Course you’re enough.”

Doubt flashes in her eyes. “You don’t have to-”

“I’m not lyin’,” he interrupts, gently. “And I’m not just sayin’ that. I… Look, I almost lost you, once. Just having you’s enough. So much more ‘n enough. And you don’t gotta love me right away. You don’t… don’t gotta feel like you have to.” He pauses, licks his lips. “We give this a shot, like we said. Couple months. More, if you want. If you don’t think it works out, we end it. No strings attached.”

“And you? If I _do_ want that… what about you?”

Frank shrugs again, tries to act cavalier about it, though the thought makes him ache all over, in a way that feels almost physical. He summons up a sad smile, somehow.

“I’ll get over it.”

 _I’ll get over it._ He’d said those words to her once, in another life, and they’d been a lie then, too. He won’t get over it, over her. It’d kill him. Gut him. Eat at him like acid – but he’d survive it. Go on, somehow. He could.

He doesn’t think he’d quite be able to call it living, though. Not without her. Not for a second time. That desolate grey existence, that month after he’d left Philly… that hadn’t been living.

And Laurel looks like she did, back then, back on the porch when she’d asked him, _What if I don’t want you to get over it?_ She has the same look on her face now that she did then; that look of blue-eyed sorrow, of restraint, like she’s holding something back, choking it down. There’s a battle raging behind those eyes of hers – a war, but then all that chaos falls away and something snaps into place, sharp and sure. She makes a decision, quietly, to herself. He doesn't know what it is; he's never been particularly good at reading her.

That is – until she moves forward all at once, raises herself up on her tiptoes, and kisses him.

He can count exactly how many days it’s been since he last kissed Laurel, since what he’d been so sure was their last kiss. Fifty-five. Might as well have been a lifetime; it’d sure as hell felt like one, like some endless, grim desert, great as the Sahara. And she’s kissing him now, kissing him gently, close-mouthed at first, a little timid. Kissing him, and he drinks her up like water, clutches her to him like a flame – not tight enough to spook her, but tight enough to keep her from slipping away, like he’s daring anyone to try to _take_ her away, ever again.

Quickly he loses himself in the kiss, in her, his hands creeping down to grasp the hollows of her hips, anchoring their bodies together, and initially it makes her tense but quickly she starts unwinding into his mouth, going loose and pliable, malleable as clay beneath his fingers, like some work of art he’s sculpting. Her fingers work their way up. Soon they’re grasping his shirt, and one of her hands settles on his cheek. She makes soft, breathy little sounds against his mouth; sounds like she had the first time they’d kissed, sounds that’d nearly fucking driven him off the deep end. He wants to surge forward, wants to kiss her rough and deep and hard like he had then, but he’s quick to remember that although this may not be their first kiss to him, it is to _her_. And he wants, _needs_ , it to be special.

You don’t get to go back in time. You don’t get second chances – but by some miracle of fate he has. It feels like a dream, the edges of his world all blurry and warm. Laurel tastes just like he remembers; sweeter, even. He reaches up and places a hand in her hair, feeling the soft strands, cherishing the feeling.

That’s what he hadn’t done before enough, maybe: cherished her. He hadn’t savored every moment, made her feel like the goddess of a girl she is. He hadn’t kissed her enough. Told her he _loved_ her enough.

He won’t make that same mistake twice.

When they break apart his eyes go to her lips immediately, and they’re glistening with saliva, swollen, the corners smudged with lipstick. Her eyes are wide, pupils dialated, mouth hanging ever so slightly agape. She’s a vision in black and white and gold, like an old Hollywood star in her dress, and also so distinctively, uniquely Laurel in her flip-flops and neon pink cast. She looks so delicious right then that it takes his breath away, and he means that quite literally. Thinks she stole the air right out of his lungs when she kissed him and has zero intentions of ever giving it back, letting him breathe again.

And he doesn’t care if he ever breathes again, as long as he can preserve this perfect moment. As long as he can freeze time forever, and stay right here, never go forward or back. Just stay _here_.

“What was that for?” he quips after a moment, smirking.

Laurel licks her lips, shaking her head. “I don’t know. I wanted to see if I could remember. If it’d help me remember.”

His stomach twists a little, at that, but he plays it off casually. “That the only reason?”

“No,” Laurel confesses, and relaxes, with a smile. “I’m your girlfriend, right? I can… do that whenever I want?”

“Damn right you can,” he teases, grinning from ear to ear. He moves in a bit closer, settling his hands on her hips. “Whenever you want and more.”

Laurel smiles, all flushed and flustered. “Good.”

Neither of them move; neither of them want to disturb the sanctity of this moment. There’s nothing about Laurel that indicates fear, uncertainty, worry – like he’s seen too many times on her to count, lately. She looks gilded beneath the streetlights, soaking up that brilliance and redirecting it ten times as brightly in all directions, a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. She glows, bright as anything. And he loves her. Falls all over again, like some hopeless, continual spiral that he never, ever wants to escape.

“Let’s go home,” Laurel suggests after a moment, breaking the silence and roping him back down into the force of gravity with her words. They come out all breathy and light, like music. “C'mon."

Frank grins again, and nods.

And he follows.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for all your lovely feedback! I super super appreciate it and it really encourages me to post a lot faster ;P wink wink hint hint.
> 
> Enjoy hoes!!

A month creeps by.

And as it does, slowly, very slowly, things start feeling maybe almost normal again.

Well, not normal. Normal is a longshot; things are still a far, far cry from normal. But they don’t feel quite so _ab_ normal, so terrifying and strange, and Laurel figures that must be something, some kind of progress. The cast on her arm comes off. The doctors seem optimistic about her recovery. She goes to class, and when the school year draws to a close and Annalise extends an offer to keep her on few days a week over the summer, she accepts, even though her first thought is that she’d much rather lie in bed all summer and sleep. Which yes, she knows is a sign of depression – but her brain already has a veritable laundry list of things wrong with it, and the last thing she needs is the doctors trying to tack on another one.

She still has pain meds. They still numb her, deaden and dull her senses, ward off any hints of that residual, pesky melancholia. And she still may or may not be taking slightly a lot more than her prescribed dosage.

She thinks she’ll worry about that later.

Things are okay. Really, they are. She has Frank, and day by day and week by week, she warms up to him more and more, starts to get a sense, maybe, of what it’d been like to be with him before. It doesn’t feel forced, though at first she’d been afraid it would, that it would be more of an obligation than anything else. It feels… easy. Natural. Intrinsic. The easiest, simplest thing in her life is letting him hold her at night, in the warm grey stillness, listening to his heartbeat, steady like a drum; listening to the rattle of sleep in his breath long after he’s drifted off and she’s still awake.

No expectations, no subtle hints about him wanting more. He’d said just having her is enough for him – and she hadn’t believed that when he’d said it, not really, but she thinks she’s starting to.

Yeah. She’s starting to.

She doesn’t tell anyone about the poster, about Lila – not even Frank. She doesn’t know why, just that it feels like she shouldn’t, like it’s something she has to figure out by herself; a journey she has to take on her own. To remembrance. To the time before. She doesn’t tell anyone about the poster, how she keeps it stashed under a pile of old t-shirts in her dresser; out of sight, out of mind, but always very much _on_ her mind. There’s something eerie about it that she can’t quite place.

She doesn’t tell anyone about the dreams, either. Red hair and water. Water.

Always water.

She’s good at pretending things are normal, though, and so when the others invite her over to Connor and Oliver’s apartment for a Friday night of drinking and celebrating the end of the school year, she accepts, though she isn’t feeling particularly revelrous. Thankfully it’s nothing too taxing; just a few six-packs and bottles of wine, followed by a round of bitching about finals – which Laurel can’t exactly contribute to, considering the fact she didn’t _take_ any of her finals, withdrawing from the courses due to extenuating circumstances. Still, she laughs along, and maybe, just maybe, even feels a little bit at ease around these people, for the first time.

Except Asher. Asher keeps making dick jokes.

Needless to say she’s decided she doesn’t really like Asher that much.

But the rest are all right. Michaela is high-strung, that’s clear to see, but nice enough, even though there are still times she tiptoes around her. Connor is arrogant, an air of haughtiness and sarcasm about him, but around Oliver he seems to soften, mellow out. _Everyone_ seems to adore Oliver, and after he bakes her homemade chocolate-chip cookies just to remind her how glad he is that she’s back, Laurel makes up her mind that she does, too.

That leaves Wes. And Wes… She likes Wes. A lot. He’s markedly quieter than the others, never talking much; a bit of an outcast, not like the rest of them. The others had been easy to make fairly quick judgements of, but she’s having a harder time figuring out just what to think about Wes, about the tentative way he looks at her, all warm brown eyes that might be friendship but feels like something more, something with more weight.

They’re a strange group, Laurel has to admit, like some sort of Breakfast Club gone wrong. But they’re her friends – her _only_ friends, apparently – so she’s decided to roll with it.

They drink until close to one, when Laurel excuses herself, texting Frank to come pick her up. Wes offers to walk her out, and although she doesn’t need him to she nods, making his way down the staircase at his side. They come to a stop out on the sidewalk, beneath the golden glow of a streetlight, lending the world around them a dim yellow tint. It’s early May, the air still cool on the tail end of spring; enough that Laurel folds her arms and tugs her leather jacket tighter around her to insulate herself from the cold.

They stand for a moment in silence, rocking back and forth on their heels, not saying much besides remarking on the weather – before Wes looks over at her, suddenly earnest, and asks, “How’re you doing? And I don’t mean, like, physically…” He shakes his head, pausing. “How’re you?”

“I’m okay,” she answers, and it’s not entirely a lie but it’s not really the whole truth either. “I just want to sleep a lot. And never leave my apartment. But besides that…”

A pause. Wes turns to face her fully, compassion in his eyes.

“I had to deal with a lot, recently. My dad, he, um… He died. About a month ago. And I felt that way too, for… forever. Or, at least it felt like forever.” He pauses again, pressing his lips into a thin line. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… I’m here for you. Always. There’s nothing I can say to make anything better and I’m not gonna try to but…” He drifts off, again, and lets out a breath. “I’m here. And I care about you.”

Laurel lets her features relax into a smile. “I, uh… I appreciate that. And I’m sorry, about your dad.”

Wes shrugs it off. “Don’t be. Let’s just say he wasn’t a good person.”

Laurel blinks, not knowing what to say to that. “Oh.”

Another pause. Longer, this time. In the distance, somewhere a few streets over, sirens blare.

“I know you don’t remember,” Wes speaks up without warning, hands in his pockets, “but we, uh… We kissed. Once.”

Laurel raises her eyebrows. “We did?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was probably not a good idea. But – I just wanted to tell you. Y’know. So you know everything.”

“Wes…” she lets out a breath, folding her arms. “I’m not ready for-”

“No – yeah, I get it. I didn’t tell you so you had to feel like you have to figure anything out, with me, or us. I just…” He gives her a little smile; barely-there, lasting only a fraction of a second. “I wanted you to know.”

Laurel laughs, under her breath. “Well, thanks for keeping me in the loop, I guess.”

That earns a chuckle from him. “Yeah. Yeah, no problem.” Wes sobers up quickly though, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “So, you and Frank are back-” He cuts himself off, oddly, starting over, and the hasty correction makes her frown. “Uh, you and Frank are together?”

“Yeah.” She nods, brushing a few pieces of hair away from her eyes. “We’re giving it a shot. Seeing where things go.”

“That’s good.” Wes forces a smile. It dies quickly, however, giving way to concern. “Just be careful, okay?”

Laurel frowns. “Careful?”

“I just mean…” He pauses, licking his lips. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. Or feel… pressured, to do stuff you don’t wanna do. I want you to be happy.” He lowers his voice, and when he speaks its soft, lilting, tinged with affection; that affection that, again, speaks of something more than friendship. “That’s all I want.”

Laurel opens her mouth to say something, but before she can she hears a car approaching in the distance, and turns just in time to see Frank turning the corner in his black BMW. She takes a step towards the curb as he draws nearer – but turns at the last second to look at Wes as something occurs to her, out of the blue.

“Hey, this might sound a little crazy but…” She falls silent, sucking in a breath. “Did we ever know a girl named Lila? Lila Stangard?”

Wes blinks, almost flinches at the sound of the name, and that’s enough for Laurel to know something is amiss. Gravely amiss.

He clears his throat, shifting awkwardly. “Uh… not really. We didn’t _know_ her, I mean. She’s…” He pauses for the millionth time, looking unsure how to phrase this, before apparently deciding just to be out with it. “She’s dead. Murdered.”

Laurel’s heart seizes up, a spike of something ripping through her, but she receives the news outwardly calm, placid. Lila. Lila Stangard, on the wanted poster. She should’ve figured she’d be dead; nine times out of ten that’s what _missing_ entails, but it throws her for a loop, for a moment, because why the _hell_ , then, is she having dreams about a dead girl she never knew? That none of them knew?

Calling to her, from the grave. Trying to _tell_ her something.

“We didn’t know her,” Wes rushes to add, as Frank pulls over and parks, peeking out at her from the driver’s side. “But we defended the girl they thought killed her, during her trial. Rebecca, was her name. But she didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?”

Wes starts to say something – a name, maybe – but before he can the sound of the window rolling down behind her cuts him off, followed by Frank’s voice instead.

“Hey, you good?”

“Yeah,” Laurel nods, and lies, lies so easily it scares her. She reaches for the car door and pulls it open, glancing back briefly at him. “See you later, Wes.”

She watches him out of the rearview mirror, as Frank pulls away from the curb and takes off down the street. Her worry must be written all over her face, because Frank asks if she’s okay not long after, glancing over at her with a frown, blue eyes big, brimming with concern. And she tells him she is, because she _is_.

She’s okay. Might be going a little crazy, maybe. But otherwise she’s okay.

 

~

 

 

She makes tea when they get home. Honey vanilla chamomile. Tea relaxes her.

Tea makes her feel a little bit less like she’s going nuts, anyway.

She showers and changes into her pajamas afterwards, and crawls into bed with the mug in her hand next to Frank, who is sitting up shirtless, hair mussed and free of gel, reading some book or other, and she never would’ve thought him much of a bibliophile but as it turns out he has a lot more layers than originally thought. He looks her way when she does, and his face lights up with that little smirk of his she’s grown so used to, that makes her feel warm all over. That feels safe. Feels almost like home; belonging, in a place she still doesn’t belong.

“So,” he says, setting aside his book. “Have a good time with the rat pack?”

She raises her eyebrows as she tugs the blanket over her legs. “The _what_?”

“The Scooby-Doo mystery gang. The other kiddies,” he elaborates, and she chortles.

“It was okay. They drank a lot. Asher kept making dick jokes. And other jokes.” She pauses, looking to him. “Did I… actually used to like him?”

Frank chuckles under his breath. “Nah. You liked Doucheface then just ‘bout as much as you do now.”

She smiles, relaxing a little and stirring her tea. “That’s good to know.” She pauses, watching the steam rise up into her face, brushing her cheeks like little fingers. “It’s still weird, though. They all talk about stuff, stuff I was there for. Inside jokes I’m always on the outside of. I don’t remember anything.” Another, longer pause. She sets aside her tea, no longer having much of a desire to drink it. “I thought… by now maybe I’d remember at least something.”

_Lila. Red hair. Water._

_HAVE YOU SEEN ME? HAVE YOU SEEN ME?_

She shakes the fragmented thought away, as Frank rolls over toward her, that same look on his face; like there isn’t a single person in the world except her who exists for him right then, like she’s the focal point of his earth, his universe. She won’t deny that being looked at like that… does things to her.

Especially when he’s shirtless. And in bed with her. And technically her _boyfriend_.

“So we’ll make new memories,” he says, nonchalant, not dismissive but reassuring. He reaches out, rubbing a hand idly up and down her arm. “And one day… this’ll all seem normal and boring again.”

She rubs her lips together. “And if it never does?”

That gives Frank pause, but he snaps out of it before long, giving a faint shrug. “Cross that bridge when we come to it, huh?”

“Okay,” she nods, and smiles, the sensation of his hand on her like fire, a pleasant, low-burning flame. “Yeah, okay.”

They lapse into a comfortable, still silence for a moment, and Laurel breaks it by reaching over onto the nightstand and grappling for a few of her bottles of pills. She fumbles with the lid and pours some indiscriminately into her hand, not bothering to count or check the dosage, then downs them with a few gulps of tea. She can feel Frank’s eyes on her as she does, sense his concern – and it’s probably not out of place, not when she’s been taking advantage of the doctors’ generous refills.

“You, uh,” he starts, sitting up slightly. “You sure you should be takin’ so many of those?”

“Yeah, why?” she feigns confusion, brushing it off. “I still get headaches. And… other aches. You don’t have to fawn over me, all right?”

Frank opens his mouth, ostensibly to protest, then decides against it and backs down, shrinking a little, in a way that makes guilt fester in her stomach. “Okay. Yeah. Sorry.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” she says with a sigh, and rolls over onto her side to face him too after placing her mug on the nightstand again, letting it grow cold. “Tell me… I don’t know. A story about us.

His eyes gleam with amusement. “A story? What, I gotta get you warm milk and tuck you into bed too?”

“That part’s optional,” she teases. “Though highly encouraged.”

“Fine,” he relents, and stops to think for a moment, before pitching himself forward, reaching onto the nightstand, and taking hold of his phone. He rolls over onto his back, and almost on its own accord she finds her body inching towards him, zeroing in. He flicks it on, then glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “This isn’t a story. But I been meanin’ to show you this.”

She waits, patiently, as he scrolls through something for a while, before turning his phone around and showing her – and when he does, she furrows her brow, taken aback. It’s a photo of him; a selfie, lying in bed shirtless, lazy, sleepy eyes, saluting the camera with one hand, ever-present cocky smirk on his face. For a moment all she does it stare, eyes flicking back and forth from the photo of Frank to Frank himself, before she scoffs, propping herself up on one elbow on the pillow beneath them.

“What is that?” she says with a laugh. “A _glamour shot_ to prove to me how hot you are?”

He raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m hot?”

She flushes, a little, and hopes it isn’t obvious. “Why else would I’ve dated you? If you were the playboy asshole you told me about?”

“Low blow.”

“Whatever. Are you going to explain this to me or not?”

He shrugs. “Wasn’t really anything, I guess. Took it when we first got together and made it my contact photo so it’d pop up every time I called you. And it did, a couple times. In front of everybody at the office.”

“And that was how you won me over? Taking that obnoxious selfie?”

He winks at her. “One of the many ways. Here, though. Here’s a real one of us.”

He swipes to the side, and another picture comes into view. True to his word, it’s the two of them this time; another selfie with oh-so-artistic camera work by Frank, his hand extended out to reveal her. They’d been standing up, somewhere, in what looks like might be his kitchen. Her face is half-buried into his neck, probably trying to shy away from the camera, body tucked up close against him, but her bashful smile is in plain sight, her cheeks reddened and eyes crinkled up at the corners with mirth. He has an arm around her, holding her close. And she’d known they were a couple, before, believed what he’d told her, but somehow this makes it feel real, tangible, what they were to each other. They were real, and he loved her.

And she thinks maybe, possibly, if the look in her eyes is any indication, she might’ve loved him too.

“We looked…” She drifts off, her chest tightening pleasantly. Her eyes water, a bit, and she doesn’t know why, how the photo evokes such emotion in her when it’s just a cheesy couple’s selfie she never would’ve in her right mind consented to. “Happy.”

“We were,” he affirms, voice raspy all at once, dropping low, the timbre making her shiver. He gives her a little smile; rueful, almost, his blue eyes flooding bluer, with something like sadness. “Happy. We were.”

“Are there others? Of us?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, we never took many. Weren’t that kinda couple. ‘S why I like that one.”

“Mmm,” she hums, and cocks her head to one side, her dark hair spilling across his shoulder. “You really have a thing for awful corny selfies, huh?”

He doesn’t try to deny it, grinning cheekily. “Guilty as charged.”

They’re silent, a moment. She lays her head down, and it fits into the crook of his shoulder like a puzzle piece, like it was made to be there. Like she was made for him, and maybe she was.

“We don’t have to be happy in the past tense, though,” she says, softly. “Right?”

He looks almost surprised, at first, like she’s caught him off guard. Like up until now he believed she may not really want to be with him, like she’s only with him because it’s what she thinks she’s supposed to be doing. But she does want to be with him; she knows it now, and there’s still so much that is murky, and half-truths scattered everywhere, hanging in the air between them. None of it matters, somehow. This feels natural, and right, and real, and her entire life she’s spent never feeling like she really belongs, always on the outskirts, the fringes.

She may not belong, now, or feel like she belongs, but she has the sense, sudden and overpowering, that she might, one day – though _might_ doesn’t feel inevitable enough.

 _Will._ It’s a chance.

It’s something.

“You got it,” he chuckles, and before she can register it Laurel is leaning in, creeping closer towards the heat of his body, hands pressed up against the smoothness of his chest, abdomen and pecs firm beneath her palms.

He doesn’t waste any time; he angles himself towards her and she adjusts accordingly, not quite crawling atop him but coming in from the side, kissing him deeply, tasting all that unique flavor wrapped up in him. He smells clean, crisp, like Irish Spring. Neither of them kisses first, initiates anything; suddenly she’s right there, and he’s right there with her, and it’s so easy to lose herself in it all, in the feeling of him. Sturdy. Steady. He deepens the kiss, nudging her lips apart and slipping into her mouth, and making some low, guttural noise in the back of his throat when he does, when he tastes the sweetness of the honey and vanilla on her tongue.

It's deeper than she’s kissed him before.

Before had been short pecks, kisses on the cheek – not like this. Suddenly she wonders if she’d been waiting all along for this, if this is the inexplicable burning she’s felt simmering inside her for weeks, always slipping out of reach when she’d tried to pin it down. His hand works its way into her hair, combing through the damp strands, and she’s always loved that and _God_ it makes her shiver, full-bodied, head to toe, to realize that he knows that, to realize how well he knows _her_. Rocks her to her bones and sends a hot pulse pounding through her. It takes on a different tone, then; something more serious. A kiss with purpose, heat. She’d been lying if she said she hasn’t thought about him in that way; they’ve had sex before, sure, and suddenly she’s just so _curious_ it drives her insane.

And she knows what she wants.

She surges, and it’s a noticeable surge, parting her lips wide and maneuvering herself on top of him ever so slightly more; not straddling him but pressed so close she’s not sure it’s any different. She smolders in his arms and he burns with her, and she drinks him up like she’s afraid she’ll forget it tomorrow, like somehow, irrationally, without explanation, she’ll lose the ability to remember all this too.

She doesn’t want to forget this, ever. She forgot it once. She _lost_ it once.

She’s tired of losing.

Her intent must become clear to Frank with the surge because not long after he nudges her off, breathless, and backs away when she tries to hone in again, fast as a little heat-seeking missile.

“Hey,” he manages to make himself sputter, make himself stop, though she can see evidence of his desire in his dialated pupils, his ragged breathing, the sweat beading tiny droplets on his brow. He shakes his head, placing a hand on her chest to hold her at bay. “Hey, Laurel, no.”

“What?” she asks, her heart sinking, plummeting down somewhere to the empty cavity where her stomach resides. She goes in again, not willing to be so easily refused. “I want to.”

“I know. Or – least you think you do,” Frank tells her, catching his breath, holding it fast, and wiping off his mouth with one hand. “But you don’t, this… This isn’t right.”

She blinks, giving a disbelieving laugh. “We’ve done it before, why does it matter?”

“I don’t want it to be like this,” he tells her, earnest but firm. “First time ‘round… it didn’t mean nothin’. And it means somethin’ now. I want it to mean somethin’.”

She swallows, throat locking up at the realization. “You don’t… you don’t want me?”

“No… Laurel, ‘course I do, you _know_ I want you-”

“But not this me.” She sits up suddenly, drawing away, eyes watering and cheeks going red, feeling so fucking _stupid_. “Right?”

“I want all of you,” he asserts, so vehemently it takes her aback, for a second. He sits up, making his way towards her on the bed, and reaches out, hand on her arm again, anchoring her, making it damn near impossible to be angry or upset at him when he’s peering over at her through that unkempt mop of dark hair, eyes sincere. “Old ‘n new. Forever. You gotta know that, you…”

He exhales sharply, shaking his head. He’s not articulating himself very clearly, and seems endlessly frustrated by the fact.

“What I’m trying to say is… When we started off before, it was just sex. Nothin’ else. I don’t want it to be just that again. I want it to be… I dunno. Real. Even if it means waiting.” Another pause. He lowers his eyes briefly then draws them back up to her, lips pinched into a frown. “I’ll wait forever. Just want it to feel right.” He gives her a smile then; tiny and tentative. “Just want it to be special.”

Laurel softens, shoulders sagging, all the anger and humiliation flooding out of her in one breath. She relents, and nods, a bit solemnly, before a grin breaks through, dumb and a bit droopy, but real.

She sniffs, giving a shaky laugh. “You sound like a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“So be it.” He moves towards her, hand creeping up her arm before moving back down, grasping her forearm gently and urging her to lay back down, come back to him – and she goes. Of course she does. Moth to a flame and all that. “It’ll be special. Bed of roses and expensive wine and Boyz II Men and everything. Whole package. Sound good?”

Laurel laughs, lowering her eyes and settling back in at his side. “I think we’re going to have to nix the soundtrack.”

“Whatever you want,” he says, and presses a kiss to her hair. “Anythin’.”

They kiss for a while, after. Slow and lazy and undemanding, before she starts drifting off mid-kiss and Frank lets her head fall down onto the pillow next to them, the fog of the painkillers and of her own exhaustion pillowing over her, warm and thick, a hammock of clouds enveloping her. Everything is silent, for a while, as her consciousness ebbs and flows, loose and tidal. Frank is still beside her, breathing steadily, and she doesn’t know if he’s asleep or not until, just as she’s about to slip under-

“I love you.” His voice pokes holes in her consciousness; faint and distant, dripping with tenderness. Almost otherworldly, and soft as a whisper, floating across the sheets to meet her ears with a gentle lilt. Somehow she has the sense that he thinks she’s asleep, doesn’t intend for her to hear. For a few seconds she isn’t even sure if the words are a dream or not. “I missed you so much.”

Laurel doesn’t stir, or give any indication she’s heard.

Instead she sleeps, sleeps deeply, and dreams of red hair and water. Of a forest. Of fire. And when she wakes in the morning she’s chilled to the bone, cold as death.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that this fic was written before season 3 aired, and in this lil universe Frank wasn’t the one who killed Wes’s dad. This is also crazzzyyyyy long but I couldn’t find a place to split it up that would make sense, so. Onward…

There’s a haze of cigarette smoke in the air when he sidles into the barstool next to her.

“Of all the gin joins in all the towns in all the world,” he drawls with a smirk.

Still clad in her blouse and skirt from work, Bonnie turns her head to look at him and scoffs, setting down her scotch glass. “Cute.”

“Never thought you’d invite me out to drinks in Fishtown,” he quips, and motions at the bartender. “Always thought you hated this place.”

“Yeah, well,” she remarks, raising an eyebrow at the dive bar around them: a bit rundown but quiet this time of day, with an excess of gaudy neon signs adorning the walls. “This was always our spot, wasn’t it? It kinda grew on me, after… what, ten years of listening to you bitch and moan about girls over drinks here?”

Frank chuckles. He has to admit she’s not wrong; that _had_ constituted the majority of their conversations here, before he’d left, before everything, back when things were… simple.

If they ever were.

“You know you didn’t have to dress up for me,” Bonnie observes, nodding down at his immaculately pressed three-piece suit.

He shrugs. “I miss the suits. Don’t really get the opportunity to wear ‘em anymore.”

There’s a pause, as he orders his drink and then turns back to her.

“Annalise know you’re seein’ me?” he asks, playing it off casually though it’s clear it’s a loaded question. “Or we gotta keep this on the DL?”

“What do you think?”

The bartender slides his glass of bourbon towards him, and Frank takes it, drinking deeply and relishing the burn as it scalds all the way down to his stomach, leaving behind a trail of fire. He gives a sound of satisfaction before setting it back down and turning to look at her, sadly.

“Right,” he says, making himself smile. “Why bother askin’?”

“She might come around,” Bonnie tries to tell him, although she doesn’t sound very optimistic. “If we give her time. Lots of time.”

“She told me she’d get me sent to jail and see me rot on death row if I ever came back there again. Don’t think time’s gonna do much to fix what I did, Bon.” He presses his lips into a line, before leaning his elbows forward onto the bar and putting the thought out of his mind. “Enough of that depressing stuff. What about you?”

She looks amused. “What _about_ me?”

“Catch me up; it’s been a while,” he says with a shrug. “Back together with Doucheface or nah?”

“No,” she shakes her head, jaw clenched, suddenly resolute. She sips from her glass, more greedily than before. “We’re… we’re over. For good. But let’s be honest here, Frank, I didn’t ask you here so you could question me about my personal life. We both know it’s not interesting anyway.” She sighs, and reaches into a bowl of pretzels sitting before them, chewing in contemplation for a moment before speaking again. “What’d you do? That whole month you were gone?”

He sighs, that deluge of unpleasant memories resurfacing unbidden. “Told ya before. Holed up in a shitty motel room and prayed Annalise wasn’t gonna send a hitman to whack me.”

“And the night you left?” she asks, features hardened, hints of suspicious gleaming in her eyes like tiny blades. “The same night Wes’s dad was shot?”

He blinks. “What – you think I had somethin’ to do with that?”

“What should I think?” she asks, not forcefully, not snappish, just sounding tired, more than anything else. Downright exhausted. “After Lila? After everything?”

“I had nothin’ to do with that,” he urges, throat tightening – just at the thought that she could believe that of him, though he knows it’s probably more than justified. “You gotta believe me, Bon. I didn’t.”

Bonnie’s eyes appraise him for a while, in silence, in that mousy, discomforting way of hers; outwardly harmless but inwardly calculating. Finally she seems to come to some kind of conclusion or other and reaches for her drink again, sipping at it, before setting it down and nodding.

“I do,” is all she says, nodding but not smiling, not giving off any warmth. Ice-cold as ever, and he hates that, hates that she’d been like his sister once, closer to him than anyone in the world, and he’d fucked that up, probably beyond repair – not as bad as Annalise, but still bad. It makes him ache, somewhere low in that pulsing mass of arteries and ventricles and blood he calls a heart, to know that it’s no one’s fault but his own. “I believe you.”

They drink in silence, for a few minutes, and it’s uncomfortable at first but soon the air evens out, the burden to speak evaporating. He sips his bourbon slowly, not wanting to be drunk, wanting to come home to Laurel sober, even though he knows she probably wouldn’t care. He doesn’t want to waste a minute with her doing things he won’t remember, though; things that’ll slip his mind. He wants to be _present_ because he was never present enough before, never lived in the moment with her as much as he should have. He wasted time. He wasted _so much_ time.

Second chances give you a whole new outlook on life, turns out.

“How is she?” Bonnie asks the inevitable question not long after. “Laurel?”

“Good. Or at least, I think.” He purses his lips. “I’m worried about her. She’s been… takin’ lots of her pain pills. Vicodin, Oxy, whatever. More ‘n she should. And she seems okay, and we’re good, but…”

Something is off. He knows her, almost better than he knows himself, and something is cosmically, chemically wrong; something palpable that he can’t quite pin down or even really describe, but something still present, always lurking just beneath the surface.

“You’re taking things slow? Not pushing her for more?”

“’Course not,” he says, affronted. “I’d never, I…” He breathes out, takes a sip. “I love her so much sometimes it’s…” Crazy. Insane. Bone-splitting. _Terrifying._

He drifts off, unable to muster up the right words. Bonnie grins. “I never thought I’d live to see the day Frank fell for one of Frank’s girls. You’re finally growing up.”

He snorts. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

But he knows she’s right. Knows he’s different because of her – changed, for the better. She’d come along, come crashing into his life like a comet of a girl, changing everything in that quiet, inevitable way of hers, and he’ll never be able to go back to the way he was before. And he doesn’t want to.

“Do you think she’ll ever remember?” Bonnie asks, her voice poking holes in his reverie. “Before? Sam? What you told her?”

His throat tightens. So does his grip on his glass, until his knuckles go bone-white. “I, uh… I dunno, Bon.”

“If she does?” she presses, gently but firmly. “What’re you gonna do then?”

“Tell her,” he answers, though the words burn. Scald. “I promised Annalise I would. Tell her the truth.”

“She’ll leave you. You know that. Everything you’ve told her… your whole relationship, that you’re even still dating. It’s all been a lie.”

_Not everything_ , he thinks. Not how much he loves her, love _d_ her before. That part had been real. _Is_ real.

“I know,” Frank says, the thought making an ache steamroll through him. “I know that. And I… I gotta let her, if she does.”

“You do love her.”

“Yeah.” He manages a low chuckle, but it comes out in a semi-forced, dark burst. He raises his glass to his lips again. “Yeah. Now I remember why I never did the whole love thing. It just… fucks you up, huh?”

“In the best way possible,” she says. “She’s doing good at work, though. Warming up to Annalise, I think.”

His stomach clenches a bit, at that, but he remains outwardly stoic. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, and, as if sensing his concern, continues, “She’s not going to tell her. She’s pissed at you, maybe, but she gets what you’re saying. Why she can’t know. Although… it’s a huge fucking mess, keeping her in the dark like this. And one day one of the other kids might slip up – even after that gag order you pretty much forced on them.”

It’s the truth; before he’d invited them over for the first time he’d had a very stern, forceful – albeit civil – conversation with the other Keating Four, explaining to them precisely why they couldn’t tell her anything, pretty much under pain of death – or the threat of a good pummeling, at least. And he knows it’s not a binding agreement, knows any one of them could open their dumbass mouths at any second and spill the beans, and send the world to pieces around the two of them.

He has to trust them, to do what’s best for Laurel. And trusting the rat pack is a _hard_ fucking thing to do.

“It’s a mess, I know, but…” He drifts off, the corner of his mouth perking up into a grin. “I heard her laugh the other day, y’know. Like I hadn’t heard her laugh in… months. Ever since Sam. She sounded so happy.” Frank pauses, staring down into his empty glass, ruefully. “Really happy.”

Bonnie smiles back, with that same ruefulness about her; something almost like pity, as if she understands as well as he does that this won’t last, that this is nothing more than a fool’s paradise. But if that’s what she’s thinking she doesn’t mention it aloud, and instead she pulls in a breath, sitting up straighter, with sudden purpose.

“There’s another reason, I asked you here too.” She pauses, and he scowls, watching as she reaches into her bag and withdraws a manila envelope, sliding it towards him on the counter. “Annalise needs to find this guy for a case. Drug dealer. Shady character. He got spooked when the cops started poking around, went underground in the city. Way underground. Honestly I have no idea where to even start.”

He raises his eyebrows skeptically. “What am I, a freelancer now?”

“I know you don’t have a job,” she tells him, matter-of-factly. “I handle our payroll, most of the firm’s finances. She wouldn’t notice if some money went missing, to… compensate you, for your time.”

“A handout.”

“Not a handout.” She exhales sharply. “A paycheck. You don’t have anything coming in without Annalise. I thought maybe this could help.”

He pauses, for a moment. Thinks, long and hard. He knows he could do it. Knows it probably would’ve even be hard for him: go underground, give a beat down to a few guys to get information out of them. Hell, he could most likely have it done before the day is out, no fuss no muss and easy money – but there’s something that stills his hand when he goes to reach for the envelope.

Frank shakes his head, suddenly resolute. “Nah. I don’t do that stuff anymore, Bon.”

She blinks, a half-laugh forming on her tongue. “What, are you… Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” He pauses, collecting his thoughts, even though he’s always been piss-poor at properly articulating himself. “Laurel’s got a shot at bein’ normal, now. Now that I’m outta that place… I do too, maybe. Live a normal life – hell, get a normal job. Quit breakin’ the law every time I blink.”

“A normal job?” she scoffs, disbelieving. “Like what?”

He shrugs. “Uncle’s got a construction company. He’d take me on.”

“So you’re gonna be Frank the Builder, now?”

“I’m serious,” he stresses, and Bonnie sobers up. “I wanna do good. Start over. I got a second chance and I’m not screwin’ it up, this time.”

She looks impressed. “You love her enough to do that? Start from scratch?”

“Yeah.” He nods, without a second of hesitation. “Yeah, I do.”

Their conversation lulls. It’s the truth; he may have had to lie to Laurel about their relationship, or parts of it at least, but he’s never lied about loving her, not once. He loves her enough to start over, to do pretty much fucking anything in the world for her, if only she’d ask. He doesn’t know how this will work; he has no college degree, and pretty much zero practical skills to apply in the real world beyond his myriad of illegal specialties – but he’ll learn. He can, as long as he has her. She makes him feel superhuman, stupidly brave.

It’s entirely possible that _stupid_ is the operative word here. He can’t say he really gives a damn.

“A toast, then,” she says, holding up her glass to his. “To new beginnings.”

It’s corny, but after all the death and destruction and shit around them, Frank is more than happy to take corny any day, and so he raises his glass, clinking it against hers with a grin.

“To new beginnings,” he echoes. “And being an upstanding member of society for once in my goddamn life.”

“Instead of what?” she quips, edging closer and closer to tipsiness. “Just an _upstanding member_?”

He snorts. “I missed you, y’know.”

“Yeah, well, you’re like my annoying little brother sometimes but…” Bonnie drifts off, looking at him fondly. “I missed you too.”

 

~

 

He comes home a few drinks later – and slightly buzzed, but only slightly – to find Laurel in the bedroom.

For a while he just stands in the doorway, watching, not moving a muscle to disturb her, like a hunter observing some graceful wild animal – but with no intent to shoot, harm. Just to watch. Stunned. Spellbound, in that kind of gentle, quietly profound way she’s always evoked in him. She makes him calm, and he’s not a calm man, never has been, has pretty much eternally lived his life in a state of some chaos or other.

But that chaos bleeds away, watching her sitting there all picturesque; a work of art. It fades to white noise in the background, and for a second he thinks he forgets that _he_ even exists, that anyone but her exists in this world at all.

The light is dim, the windows behind her black with the night and the blinds cascading down over them, cinched halfway shut. She’s perched on the side of the bed barefoot, facing away from him, clad in that tight grey dress from work that’s always been a favorite of this, and doesn’t hear him when he approaches, her attention fixed instead on rubbing lotion onto her legs. They catch the light and gleam gold when she lifts them up, one and then the other, little hands groping up and down and massaging the lotion into her skin – and for a moment he’s so irrationally happy to see her do something like this, taking care of herself, something _for_ herself. Her hair is mussed from the long day, face bare of makeup; beautiful in all her simplicity, and he leans against the doorway for God knows how long, fixated.

And it’s true; he doesn’t know how long. He never has a solid grasp on time when he’s with Laurel these days; it’s like she manipulates it with some mystical power, the way the moon pulls the tides. It passes as if in a dream, all distorted, flowing smooth and easy, what feels like hours mere minutes – and that’s her. All her.

He’d been wrong to call her a princess, before. He knows better now.

She’s not a princess. She’s a goddess.

Laurel stands, suddenly, and goes for the dresser to retrieve something. She rummages for a while, before withdrawing a towel and spinning around – and when she does she finally notices him there, her eyes snapping up to meet his. She flinches, startled, but breaks out into an easy smile not long after.

“Hey,” he greets, not making a move, still staring.

“Hey,” she says back. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

He doesn’t answer, just hums lowly, distracted – by her, the gentle flush of her cheeks, the subtle upward quirking of her lips that can only just barely be called a grin, the graceful, smooth scoop of her neck and the loose curls in her hair. It seems to unnerve her a little, to be stared at so intently, and she shifts her weight from one leg to another, raising an eyebrow.

“What?” she asks, a bit teasingly, and finally Frank stands up straight, shoving his hands in his pockets and giving a shrug.

“Nothin’,” is all he says. “You’re just beautiful, is all.”

She casts her eyes downward as he makes his way over to her, scoffing but still smiling. “Stop.”

“Make me,” he replies, quiet, just a murmur, and its teasing but it’s also too laced with affection and tenderness to be teasing, to be just banter. He comes to a stop before her, at a comfortable distance – not too close but not too far, and much to his surprise she closes the gap between them immediately, reaching her arms up and lacing them around the back of his neck, and leaning forward to peck him on the lips. She pulls away, eyes all glazed over with exhaustion, a lazy grin on her face, and something in his chest clenches hard, constricts tighter and tighter with each passing second. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” she says dismissively, glancing up at him with a sigh. “How was drinks with Bonnie?”

“’Bout as much fun as drinks with Bonnie can ever be,” he jokes. “But we had a good time.”

Her eyes narrow, though he can tell it’s joking – or at least he thinks it is, for the most part. “I have any reason to be jealous? You _did_ get all dressed up for her, after all.”

“Bon’s like my sister. You got nothin’ to worry about. Ever.”

“Mmm. Good.” She sighs, and turns around. “Unzip me?”

He hesitates, at first, though it’s an innocuous request. Hesitates to touch her too intimately, spook her – although Laurel has demonstrated before she’s more than willing to be intimately touched, willing to go beyond the boundaries he’s established. After a moment he snaps out of it, however, and reaches out, brushing her hair to the side and grabbing hold of the zipper and tugging gently downward, his heart thumping as he watches the black teeth part and the smooth field of marble skin on her back come into view.

It inches down slowly, revealing the sinuous line of her spine along with it, then the crescent-shaped birth mark on her lower back – one he remembers well. He catches a whiff of her shampoo when it moves in closer; floral, warm, emanating ever so slightly from her. It’s all tantalizing. All too little and all too much.

Before he even realizes what he’s doing he’s kissing her.

He sweeps her hair over one shoulder and places his lips on the nape of her neck, without thinking it through, without considering that it might startle her. With the zipper undone her dress falls forward ever so slightly, the straps sliding down her shoulders and baring them too, and he kisses them, slow and undemanding but full of hunger, just to feel her; skin on skin. Softness. Everything about Laurel is soft and smooth and soothing, _perfect_ , and he makes a low sound against her shoulder, feeling his beard bristle against her.

She turns her head back slightly to look at him, all the tension flooding out of her, and gives a high, fluttering sigh which carries his name on it. “Frank…”

“You’re beautiful. So fucking beautiful,” he says again, like those are the only words in his vocabulary – and in that instant they might as well be. He moves in closer, hands dropping down to her hips, and she angles herself back towards him so he can reach her lips with his. “I don’t tell you that enough.”

She gives a breathless laugh, and he kisses the sound as it leaves her mouth. “You tell me that a lot.”

_Not before,_ he thinks. _I never told you enough before. Not near enough._

But _before_ doesn’t matter now. Holding onto before won’t do her any good – or him. Before is dead and buried six feet under. They had _before_ , once, but all they have in this moment is _now_ , and _now_ is so wonderfully amazing, beyond any of his wildest dreams, any of the fantasies he’d concocted while he’d spend that month hopping from shitty motel to equally shitty motel; fantasies about coming back, having her again. Having her, by some miracle, forgive him. He’d been lovesick, like a fool. Now he feels full to bursting with love again, affection for this girl. So much emotion he never thought it’d be possible for him to feel so many different ways at once.

But she’s not a girl. She was _Frank’s girl_ once, maybe, but now she’s a woman – strong and fierce, steel in her spine and fire in her veins, and somehow, somewhere along the line, she let him call her _his_.

His hands go to the bodice of her dress almost of their own volition, controlled by the primal humming in his bones. It’s already loose, and all it takes is one firm tug to slough it off, sending it crumpling down around her waist and exposing her nude bra beneath – and it’s the most of her body he’s seen in so long it sets him all aflame, a slow, sweet burn.

His lips migrate to her neck, placing hot, needy kisses there too and leaving a trail of saliva behind. Hands on her breasts, kneading tentatively, palming them through the fabric. Bodies pressed up hard against each other, heat on heat. Cock stirring in his slacks, straining against them, thrumming like a live wire. He should stop, _God_ , he needs to stop; he’d said he’d wanted this to be special. Wanted them to be real, if they happened again.

But this feels so real. So right.

“Laurel…” Her name comes out on something like a growl, with a note of warning in it; a sign that he knows if he continues this course of action for much longer he won’t be able to stop. “We shouldn’t do this-”

It’s like she can read his mind, how fast the answer bursts past her lips – almost panicked. She’s always been perceptive, seen past his layers, looked underneath his exorbitantly expensive watches and three-piece suits and ties to see him for what he really is. She knows him, in a way not a lot of people have ever known him in his life.

And she knows he wants to stop just about as much as she does – which is to say, not at fucking _all_.

“Don’t,” she pants, and finally turns to face him completely, just as her dress slips down around her hips and then her ankles, a puddle of dull grey on the carpet. She’s left in her bra and black panties; simple lace, not too revealing, but the sight still hits him hard, leaves his head reeling. Laurel shakes her head once the dress tumbles off, raising herself up to capture his lips again. “Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t. He can’t disobey her.

He’d do anything in the world for her. He said that, once, told her he’d do anything for her. He still means it. Now more than ever.

So he doesn’t. Instead, he breaks away and kisses his way down south, lower and lower; first her neck, then her collarbone and breasts, then stomach and belly button until she’s giggling helplessly, his beard tickling her. Her laughter dies on her tongue, however, when he sinks down onto his knees completely, hooking his fingers into the sides of her panties and urging them down.

He does it slowly, gently, with his eyes locked on her all the while; giving her an out if she wants to take it. Letting her know it’s all right, if she wants him to stop – but from below all he can see are the graceful mounds of her breasts, the smooth plane of her stomach. The way her eyes are shut, head lolling back, breathing shallow, and he’s almost certain she’s not planning on saying anything when suddenly-

“Wait,” she says. He freezes, stops everything, and defers to her at once. Laurel sucks in a breath, eyelids fluttering open to look down at him and cheeks flushed – from desire, of course, but there’s something else too. “I haven’t… shaved, or anything. For a while.”

It’s a softly-spoken confession, a little sheepish; it’s clear she’s embarrassed. He can’t help but chuckle – to think he’d care about such a stupid, trivial thing, when just two months ago he was sure he’d lost her forever. And now she’s here again, and sometimes he still isn’t sure this is real, thinks maybe one day he’ll wake up on some lumpy hotel mattress in the middle of nowhere and this will all have been a dream.

But she’s blessedly real. Angelic. _Goddess_ , he thinks again, before he can help it. She’s a goddess walking amongst man and he’s one hell of an undeserving mortal – but she’s here. Here with him. She _chose_ to be here with him.

And it feels fitting to be on his knees for her like this. To worship her.

“You think I care?” he quips, yanking her panties down and watching the lace pool delicately around her ankles. “I got more ‘n enough hair on my face. Not like I mind it in other places.”

Laurel almost laughs at that.

Almost – because right before she can, he urges her thighs apart, raises his face to her folds, and dives in.

He starts slow. Of course he does. Slow and languid, licking a stripe from the base of her pussy up to her clit in one long, firm sweep. It’s not an entirely preferable angle but somehow he doesn’t care, makes it work, thinks any angle is a good angle so long as it means getting a taste of her – and after so long without her he’d almost forgotten how she does taste: sweet and tangy, thick as syrup and ten times as sweet. Distinctive and as delectable as any confection on earth, and her smell, all that delicious musk, makes him sweat, his body awakening, cock rearing to go behind his zipper like a bull in its cage. It draws a moan from her – more throaty and hoarse, this time – and he shifts on his knees, trying to ignore the throbbing between his legs as what must be every single drop of blood in his body rushes down to his dick at the sound.

“Oh, God,” she chokes out, voice breaking. She gives a breathless laugh, trying to steady her trembling knees but wobbling a bit nonetheless. “Bed. Now.”

He has her scooped up in his arms in seconds, her thin legs coiled around him like vines, and it only takes a quick spin to position her in front of the bed and let her down on top of it. She gives a delighted _oof_ when she lands, laughing breathlessly as he climbs atop her, kissing her again, kissing her deeper.

He draws back, has her bra off in seconds, but something stops him from pouncing immediately, makes him slink back and kneel down at the end of the bed to take in the sight of her from a slight distance; gentle, golden curves in the lamplight, the flat plane of her stomach, the crack between her thighs, parted ever so slightly, the perfect rounding of her breasts and rosebud nipples begging to be touched, caressed. Kissed. _Worshipped_. Venerated. All of her – every single solitary inch is holy and he knows that now. He was so, so stupid not to realize it before.

This bed is their altar. Their church. It’s the closest he’s ever come to religion, basking in the sight of her like this; almost glowing somehow, generating her own light like a little otherworldly sun; a holy idol. A monstrance at adoration.

She _deserves_ to be adored and God, _God_ , he adores her so fucking much.

Laurel covers one hand with her mouth, laughing softly and concealing her smile, but it glitters in her eyes. “Stop staring at me.”

“You’re beautiful,” is all he can say, again, like an idiot, an imbecile. A love-struck fool. He inches upwards, settling down before her legs, and she spreads them quickly so he can position himself between them. Instead of moving in at once, however, he just looks at her reverently; not smiling, not teasing her, all of that wanton bravado gone and replaced with sincerity. “You’re so beautiful.”

He raises himself, dipping his head down just above her holds and hovering there for a moment, before opening his mouth and kissing her, slow and sweet – no different than he would kiss her other set of lips. She’d been trying to say something, but the words break off into a gasp and a full-bodied shudder passes through her, so hard he can feel it in his bones too, but he doesn’t let up. He kisses her there, and that’s all he does at first: kisses, not licking or sucking or paying much attention at all to her clit. He can feel fresh wetness rush to coat his lips, her folds pink and gleaming, like velvet curtains, clit standing out larger by the second, and he swears he can feel her heartbeat in the little nub, feel it pulsating as she writhes beneath his mouth, gasping and crying out things indistinctly but very clearly _not_ begging.

Maybe he would, under normal circumstances. Make her beg for it, him, his mouth, or lick her and get her right on that delicious edge and then stop just to drive her mad – but none of that is for tonight. None of it feels right.

There is a time and a place for all that, and it’s not now.

His lips and beard are coated with the pearly beads of her wetness by the time his tongue finally darts out to lick her, flicking at her clit, wringing a series of high-pitched, reedy gasps from her throat. She’s propped herself up on one elbow, lifting her head enough to watch him from above as he works; he can feel her eyes on him, and every now and then he glances up to meet them, maybe gives her a wink, maybe just looking back.

His face is all but jammed against her cunt, burrowed between her legs where he’s happiest, as he pushes deeper, wrapping his lips around her clit and working it back and forth languidly with his tongue. Her reaction is immediate: she tilts her head back, eyes fluttering shut, and moans, raking one hand through his hair – not pulling or yanking. It’s surprisingly tender, her movements as he eats her. Gently encouraging him to keep going, and she’s saying things, things he can’t really hear or understand, but he knows they’re not pleas. And he doesn’t _want_ them to be pleas.

If either of them should be begging it’s him: hands clasped in supplication, kneeling before her. Begging for his life. For her mercy.

“Frank,” she sputters, hips bucking up into his mouth, muscles crunching forward and up and tighter. Her moans drop down, lower and throatier and with that hint of warning. “Frank – f-fuck, oh my _God_ , God-”

“Lemme make you come,” he says, voice again almost beseeching, pleading. It’s all he wants, so much so that he can hardly feel his cock now, has completely re-centered his world around her, her desires his. He surges forward, steady but relentless and picking up speed as her cries escalate in pitch, frequency. “Let it come. Lemme watch you…”

But suddenly, inexplicably, she’s shaking her head.

“No. Stop,” she manages to choke out, and opens her eyes, gnawing on her lower lip. He pulls away from her, the heat of his mouth leaving the heat of her center and making her groan almost in agony – but he pulls away anyway, obedient, and looks to her for further instructions.

“Come up here,” she mumbles, forehead and body gleaming with sweat, and she looks like molten gold now. Gilded. Just as bright and twice as magnificent. “I want you.”

This is a bit bewildering; normally Laurel never has an issue with him just using his mouth – because his mouth is… well, an extension of _him_ , as much as his cock. But she seems dissatisfied, for some reason, and so he hauls himself up, willing and able and standing at attention to give her what she wants – in more ways than one.

Suddenly it strikes him that he’s fully clothed; he has no idea how he’d missed it, gone this long before losing his mind, ripping the clothes off his body, and fucking her through the mattress, and even though the beast in his brain still wants to do that, and wants to do it very much, he won’t.

Sweet. Slow. This may not be their first time for him but it is for her, and that’s all that matters, and he’ll have her however she’ll let him, even if she won’t let him at all.

Their first time. The realization stuns him, as he makes his way onto the bed, taking a seat nude and tugging her into his lap, so close their foreheads brush; this position always more intimate than any other, making love while face-to-face, the only place to look into the other’s eyes. This is their first time for her and he wants her to have this, have something special, because the porch sure as fuck was memorable but not particularly special, and not romantic in the slightest.

Yes, he remembers their first time. Fumbling their way towards a quick come in the darkness, shameful, terrified of being caught and not particularly finessed. This is nothing like that. This is the first time they should’ve had, the first time she’d deserved: to be laid out on a bed and pampered like a queen and fucked _good_ but fucked _slow_ , coming over and over, coming undone. Slow and sweet – that’s what he wants.

This is nothing like their first time. This is a do-over, a second shot to do this and do it right, and dammit if he isn’t going to make it count.

She’s panting atop him, all boneless with want and whimpering. He’d left her just on the brink and she’s lost all ability to articulate coherent thoughts, articulate much of anything besides his name, over and over. She sounds almost desperate, and he thinks about how easy it would be to tug her down onto his cock and give her what she wants – but no.

Slow and sweet. Steady.

“Hey,” he soothes, to calm her half-hysterical panting. Frank places a hand on her cheek, urging her to look him in the eyes. “Hey, I got you. Steady. Steady, princess.”

“Okay.” She quiets down, after a moment, and opens her eyes, nodding, slowing her breathing. Steady, steady, and she is; she’s steady, finally, and flushed all over. “O-okay.”

They stay there like that, for a long moment. He’s not inside her though he could so easily be; he’s just holding her in his lap, one hand on the small of her back, the other tucking strands of sweaty hair behind her ear and caressing her cheek while her lithe little hands explore his chest. They press down on his pecs, broad shoulders, feeling the firmness between them, and her pupils are blow up black with wanting, mouth hanging agape as she takes him in, just like he’d taken her in. He won’t deny it’s a bit unnerving to be looked at like that, like he’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen in her life, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak beyond a few meaningless, nonsensical sweet nothing in her ear. They’re still, and he relishes the stillness, the press of her breasts to his chest, the warmth of her body and God, really just _her_.

“Like what ya see?” he quips, a bit breathless, achingly hard but tamping down the urge as best as he can.

Laurel hums, doesn’t give a definite answer, though the blissed-out look in her eyes is enough to let him know. After a moment her hands slide further south, down to his lap in the space between them, and slowly, very gently, she wraps her fingers around his cock, taking him into hand – again with that curiosity, every part of his body new and unfamiliar to her, uncharted territory.

He’s willing to let her learn him, all over again. Of course he is.

He gulps at the feeling, though: her soft palms, her tentative touch, the pad of her forefinger when she brushes it over his tip to massage the precome beading there. He jerks slightly, hips thrusting up instinctively, up towards her, wanting more, as she traces the prominent veins in his cock too, before wrapping a hand around his girth again, wordlessly, and giving him a firm pump – and if he were a lesser man he would’ve come already, would’ve come minutes ago at the sight of a buck naked Laurel in his lap, exploring his cock with wide-eyed inquisitiveness. Reacquainting herself with every inch of him.

“Laurel-” Her name frees itself from his throat in a ragged burst, a half-growl.

“I want you,” she breathes. Her eyes are half-lidded, everything about her so alluring he can hardly look at her, considers closing his eyes to regain at least some semblance of control. Laurel gnaws on his lower lip, timid but sure – and he remembers how she’d looked the first time he’d brought her home with him, and she’d looked like this. Timid, sure, but daring. Timid but certain. She knows what she wants, and when she’s made up her mind he knows there’s no swaying her. “I want you to fuck me.”

He clenches his jaw, as she takes him in hand, lowering herself onto him until he’s placed between her folds, just before that simmering lake of fire. She doesn’t take him inside her at first, though; instead she hangs back, gliding the head of his cock back and forth across her labia then up to her clit, making herself wetter still – though she’s so soaked now he doesn’t know if that’s possible.

“Oh yeah…” She whines, rocking her hips, fucking torturing him, using his cock on herself like a toy – but it isn’t a toy she wants, and they both know that. “Like… l-like that, _ah_ …”

Somewhere, from some deep place in Frank’s chest, comes a dark laugh. “You gonna quit teasin’ me anytime soon here?”

“You just… f-feel so good, I…”

_Goddess_ , he thinks again. Cruel and merciful but right now, in this instant, just very very very _cruel_.

“This’ll feel better,” he promises, voice low, and replaces her hand on his cock with his own, lining himself up. “You got my word.”

He breaks away with a start, momentarily, reaching one long arm back to yank open the top drawer of her nightstand, where he knows she keeps her condoms, and retrieves one. Maybe before they’d been reckless enough to go without protection, and Laurel may be popping a lot of pills these days but he isn’t sure if birth control is among them. So he tears it open, rolling it down the length of his cock in one fast, unceremonious movement, not wanting to waste even a second.

“You good?” he undertones even though he knows she is, and looks up at her, cupping her cheek in his palm, feeling her squirm and wriggle atop him.

She nods, frantic. “Do it. Do it, please…”

She doesn’t have to ask twice.

He does. He reaches out, hands on her hips and palms fanning out wide on her hipbones, and urges her down in one swift motion. The condom may dull the sensation but it doesn’t dull the knowledge of what he’s doing, or the sound of the little sob that looses itself from Laurel’s throat when he slips inside her, or the way her eyes flutter shut, or the sight of her adjusting to his girth for the first time all over again, whimpering in combined discomfort and ecstasy. He fills her completely, fills her perfectly, like her body was carved out only for him and he for her, and all that delicious heat and tightness closing in around his cock is enough to make Frank’s world pulse red around the edges.

And he missed this. He’d missed _her_ so much.

“Oh God,” she mewls, arms looping around the back of his neck, all of her weight leaning on him as she dares to delve down onto him and rocks slowly, rocks with him. “Oh, _ah_ -”

She’s close. She had been before, too, but now he knows she’s teetering on that edge, gritting her teeth, riding him more steadily now and starting to succumb to all that fullness, all that friction. He keeps one hand on her back to anchor her to him, and lowers his mouth to her breasts, suckling at her nipples, latching on and feeling her shiver when he does. He’s close too, maybe, but somehow he can barely feel it, thinks he could last for hours like this.

Let her ride him for hours, if she wanted. He’d give her anything she wanted.

“I got you,” he echoes, gently, as her rhythm atop him starts to break, the delicate muscles inside her cunt fluttering and pulsing and closing in tighter around him as if to hold him there forever – and he doesn’t think he’d mind that, not really. He places a trail of wet kisses up to her neck, running his fingers through her hair just like she likes, in that way that always gets her off. She moans, again, lower and longer and more desperate and almost frustrated, so close to coming he can see tears beading in the corners of her eyes. “I got you, Laurel, I got you.”

_I love you_ , is what he really wants to say, but knows it’ll startle her. _I love you. I love you._

_I love you so fucking much._

“Frank-” she keens, eyes shut, brows knitted together. “ _Frank_ -”

He bends his head down again, closing his lips around one of her breasts and inching his hand down in the space between them, lower and lower until he finds her clit with the pad of his fingers; he’s always known her body like a map, still does, better than he knows even himself. He can feel himself there, feel where they’re joined, and the sensation is so erotic and overwhelming that it almost brings him off right then and there – but he holds back.

He’ll see her come first, even if his brain is boiling, even if every inch of him is pressurized and ready to burst. He’ll see her come first if it kills him.

Luckily, a few touches is all it takes to make her crumble.

She comes with his name on her lips, something like a half-sob, half-moan ripping itself from her throat. It isn’t fast, or hard, or mind-blowing or any of that; she comes with gentle spasms, shaking to pieces on top of him and letting herself fall forward, burying her face into his shoulder, leaning all her weight on him. He wishes he could see her face, knows how beautiful she always looks when she comes, but listening to her cries against his skin as they crescendo and fade is enough. Feeling himself inside of her, buried deep right where he belongs, right where he feels like home, is so much _more_ than enough.

She rides him through it, movements choppy but somehow still graceful until the waves of her orgasm ebb away, and he comes not long after, comes staring into her hazy, contented eyes as she reaches a hand up, caressing his cheek, biting her lower lip. It’s not particularly ceremonious, some grand finale, some earth-shattering eruption; he comes, and it’s slow and sweet, the pleasure a low buzz, the heat soft like embers in his belly.

Yes, he remembers their first time, on that porch in another life, all the hasty fumbling and clumsiness. He remembers it perfectly.

This is so different. This is so much better.

He doesn’t pull out, for a while afterward. Laurel doesn’t move off of him either; she stays right where she is in his lap, giving him lazy kisses, peppering them on his jawline. They aren’t speaking but they don’t exactly have to; he cherishes all her silence, basks in it. She’s always been a woman of few words and he loves that about her, and sometimes he thinks he never understands her better than he does like this: without words to complicate things, get in the way. They’re in their purest, realest, most plain form like this, in this stillness; all their layers and words and crutches stripped away from them.

Laurel is the one to speak up, giving a soft, loopy chuckle. “ _Wow_. Was it always that good?”

“You betcha,” he teases, grinning. “Even better.”

“Mmm,” she hums, red-faced, flushed from her head to her toes, all disheveled and golden and gorgeous. “Good to know. For… future reference.”

Another minute passes, in silence. Finally, she shifts back and lets him slide out of her, and he pulls off the condom, tying it off and tossing it in what he thinks is the general direction of the waste bin.

He isn’t sure. Can’t tear his eyes from her, right then. He’s brimming with emotion, so many at once he can’t pinpoint them, flowing out of him everywhere like cracks in a dam, and so he doesn’t try to; he just lets himself feel, lets her breathing wash over him, inhales the scent of her. He holds her and he knows this, _she_ is all he’ll ever need, right here. Knows if he died right now he’d die a happy man.

He feels like he _could_ die, from loving her. Thinks it might legitimately stop his heart one of these days.

“Did I ever say it back?” she asks suddenly, drawing him out of his thoughts. He frowns, not sure what she means, and Laurel lowers her eyes. “You said you loved me. And you told me, right?”

_You killed an innocent girl. Strangled her on a roof. And for what? To make Annalise happy? Do you think that's the type of person I want to love me? It's not._

_And the truth is I don't love you back._

_I don’t love you back._

The words echo. He shakes his head, shutting them out. “Yeah.”

“So… did I say it back?”

He swallows, thickly, and shakes his head.

“No. But…” Frank lets out a breath, smile wavering, growing a bit tearful, almost. “I like to think you did.”

“I think I did, too,” she tells him, and smiles. “You know. If I had to guess.”

They kiss for a little while longer, sleepily, before she breaks away and crawls off his lap, announcing, “I’m gonna go take a shower – which you so _rudely_ interrupted before, by the way.”

“Alone?” He runs a hand through his hair, eyes dancing, and watches her do an elegant sort of pirouette over to the bathroom door, light on her feet and naked as the day she was born. She turns at the sound of his voice, and he grins wolfishly. “Because y’know… I’m all about conservationism.”

She chortles, vanishing around the corner. “I’m sure you are. Grab me a shirt and then we’ll talk. Bottom drawer.”

He obliges, getting to his feet and yanking open one of the drawers. He paws through her clothing for a second, before finding nothing and descending to the drawer beneath it. He locates a stack of t-shirts there and flips through them idly, before yanking out a loose white sleepshirt he thinks should suffice.

The sound of a distinct _crinkle_ as he liberates it, however, makes him freeze.

Curious, he sets aside the shirt and moves aside the pile – and the instant he does, and finds Lila Stangard’s paper face peering up at him from the bottom of the drawer, he stops breathing.

It’s a poster, one of the ones campus had been inundated with after her disappearance. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? is spelled out in large, screaming red lettering across the top. It has her picture: red hair and green eyes. Date of birth.

He feels bile rise in his throat, when he ventures deeper and sees that’s not the only thing she’s collected.

Newspaper clippings. There’re newspaper clippings too, at least half a dozen. All about Lila, some earlier, some after her death. Some naming Sam Keating as the suspect. All with grainy black and white photos of her. There’re some about Sam, too. His disappearance. One of his missing posters too. Laurel had recognized him. Him and Lila – that’s the only explanation.

She’d recognized them.

She’s _remembering._

He stares for a minute at the pile, frozen with horror. He stares, can’t move, can hardly fucking breathe, until Laurel’s voice from the next room startles him out, echoing hollowly off the tile walls of her bathroom.

“Frank? You coming?”

He tucks the collection away hastily, hands trembling, covering it back up with the t-shirts and grabbing the one he’d chosen. He nods, gulping, trying to avoid the sinister feeling, that dread, roiling deep in his gut, slithering there like a cold, scaly serpent. That doom. The _end_. He feels suddenly like he’s watching the sands of time slip through an hourglass. Watching everything slipping from his grasp all at once with no way for him to stop it.

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. “Yeah, I’m comin’.”


	13. Chapter 13

She’s been remembering things.

Little fragments of things. Scraps of memories that she doesn’t think she can quite call _memories_ – but aren’t nothing, either. Things in dreams, bleary and broken and always drifting out of her grasp before she can pull them close. The office. Something with the trophy Asher had showed her. Screaming. Blood. Something with _blood_.

She’s been remembering things. She hasn’t been telling anyone.

She knows she should be. Telling the doctors, or at the very least telling Frank, trying to get him to help her make sense of them, piece them together, and she cares for him, falls a little more every day, but for some reason she has the sense that he’s lying to her. Withholding something. Something is off, with him and everyone around her. It’s possible she’s going crazy. Probably she is.

But slowly, very slowly, she begins to realize maybe she isn’t.

It starts during one of her doctor’s appointments; a regular check-up to monitor her recovery, check for any unusual symptoms or signs of further damage to her brain. It’s all droll and hopelessly boring, sitting cooped up in a stuffy waiting room before they slide her into a claustrophobic, sterile white tube to do an MRI and ask her all sorts of questions, and she must seem normal enough because none of them say anything to alarm her.

She’s not dead yet. So she’s got that going for her at least.

The nurses give her overly-cheery smiles, all too bright and too enthusiastic, almost simpering. The doctor is different when he comes in, though; an older man, early sixties, stout with grey hair and lines on his face and a no-nonsense attitude about him. He asks if she’s had any progress, any memories, and the lie rolls off her tongue so easily it surprises her, like she barely has to try to formulate it, and she wonders when she’d gotten so good at doing that. _How_ she’d gotten so good at doing that.

“You’re keeping busy, at least?” he asks, finally, standing and grabbing his clipboard, going for the door. “Taking classes over the summer?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m interning at a law firm, actually,” she answers, getting to her feet. “Annalise Keating. She’s a-”

“-Defense attorney,” he finishes for her, raising his eyebrows. “I’ve heard of her; she’s been all over the news these last few months. The one who killed her husband, right?”

Laurel blinks. “Excuse me?”

“You didn’t hear?” He seems to realize his mistake and closes his mouth, shaking his head. “Forgive me, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

He turns to go but she calls out after him, voice sharp. “No. Can you… What happened, to her husband?”

The man lets out a breath, hesitating to begin. Finally, he raises his chin, looking her in the eyes.

“It was a few months back. They found her husband’s body… cut up in a landfill, or something. Burned. Dan, was his name. Or – no, that wasn’t it. Sam. His name was Sam. They suspected he killed some girl he was having an affair with, who he’d gotten pregnant. But it’s not exactly like he’ll face jail time on the wrong side of the grass now is it?”

_Cut up in a landfill. Burned. Sam. Sam Keating._

Burned.

It sounds familiar. More familiar than it should. It bounces around the inside of her skull, incessant. Haunting. She’d known Annalise had had a husband. She hadn’t known what’d become of him, and nobody had told her.

“The girl,” she blurts out. “The one he was… having an affair with. What was her name?”

“Oh, I don’t remember,” he says, dismissively, and leads her over to the door. “I remember seeing her picture on the news. Pretty thing. Red hair. Shame, too. She was so young. Stupid, to get mixed up with a man like that.”

He leaves her, with that. She doesn’t press him for more; somehow she senses she shouldn’t.

But it rattles her to her bones, stays stuck in her head for the rest of the day, leaves her silent and brooding during the car ride back to her apartment with Frank. Red hair. _Red hair._ It’s unsettling and she can’t shake the feeling in her stomach, a hard, heavy pit forming there, and she waits until Frank leaves to go to the store to pull out her laptop, opening the browser and punching in Sam Keating’s name.

And that’s when she finds the articles. Pages upon pages of them.

_Middleton psychology professor found dead in landfill. No suspects in killing of local professor. Sam Keating found dead after being reported missing by his wife. Middleton professor now a suspect in murder of student Lila Stangard._

_Lila Stangard._

_Lila._

Lila.

The name makes her stop dead in her tracks. Her heart seizes up and her throat locks, and everything goes blurry around her as she opens the article and skims it, the brightness of her screen casting a hollow, eerie glow on her features. She’d been strangled, body found dumped in the water tank of her sorority house. Rebecca Sutter – she’d been accused of the murder but the case had been dropped before trial. Sam. It’d been Sam. Lila was pregnant. DNA evidence. He’d been the father. The killer. He’d killed her.

And she sees his picture. And suddenly something – something sudden and hard and brutal as a kick, a gunshot – hits her in the back of the head.

The office. She remembers being there. She remembers his face – _Sam’s_ face. She remembers blood. But Sam had been there. So had she. It’d been at night. Winter. Cold. It’s all flashes, like a skipping reel of film.  

But it’s real. She knows it had been real.

Sam had killed Lila and someone had killed Sam and suddenly she can’t breathe, suddenly the walls are closing in, boxing her in, relentless and sinister and everything too dark, too grey. She doesn’t know what it means – what any of it means. Her head is spinning so fast and whirring into overdrive and she’s lost, only able to stare at the picture of Sam Keating; his official university portrait on a grey background, a crooked smirk on his face.

Sam. Lila. Sam and Lila and Sam killed Lila and someone killed Sam and God, _God_ she thinks, somehow, irrationally, that maybe she knows who.

She starts collecting articles, after.

Newspaper clippings. Anything she can find. She collects them and pores over them whenever she has time alone, staring at the grainy black and white pictures of Lila and Sam, puzzling over them endlessly, trying to summon up something from the gaping black holes in her mind but continually coming up with nothing, or mere fragments and bits and pieces that don’t make any sense. They mean something; she knows it. She doesn’t know how she knows but she does, sure as she’s breathing. She wants to bash her head against the wall, some days. Rip her hair out to stir something, _anything_ , inside her.

There must be a way. It must _mean_ something to her. All of it.

She hides it from Frank. Maybe it’s paranoia that makes her do it – because she trusts him, cares for him, but something is wrong. And they have sex for the first time a week later, slow and sweet and so tender she could cry, and she feels herself falling deeper, and it’s a blissful, thrilling kind of falling and she never wants to stop, not even close. It feels so innate too; so easy to be with him. The easiest thing in her life. The only thing that feels really truly _real_.

But there’s something he isn’t telling her. Something _no one_ is telling her; smokescreens all around her at every angle, obscuring things from her view.

Five days pass. She isn’t sleeping much. She keeps dreaming of red hair and water but now there’s Lila’s face, and Sam’s, and her own tossed into the mix. And woods. Fire. Sometimes there’re others with her – but all with blank faces and indiscernible bodies, shapeless black specters.

Five days pass.

Then, on the sixth, she goes to the house.

 

~

 

She doesn’t know why, can’t explain what draws her there. It calls to her, somehow. Beckoning her.

She goes under cover of night, making up some excuse for Frank about meeting up with the others for drinks and dressing to the nines in a little black dress to sell the story, and she thinks he buys it. It looms over her as she stands on the sidewalk, once a cheerful blue that now seems almost menacing, with all its intricate white trim and pointed roofs, the chimney sticking up as the lone spot of red. Red as blood. The metal sign out front catches the streetlight and gleams gold, swinging idly back and forth in the wind.

As if in a trance, she walks up to the front door.

She’d swiped Frank’s office key when he wasn’t looking and slides it into the lock slowly, as quietly as she can manage; Annalise’s car is in the driveway and she probably shouldn’t be there, and the last thing she needs is to get fired because of some crazy, paranoid hunch. She pushes the door open once it unlatches and creeps inside, shutting it behind her and cursing the high-pitched squealing of the ancient wood. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Her heart is about to beat out of her chest and adrenaline is rushing like lava in her veins, and all she knows is that she needs to be here.

She needs to be here to remember. It calls to her, like Mecca.

She steps inside, down the hall. Her shoes brush silently on the hardwood and she’s thankful. She can see the light on up in Annalise’s room at the top of the stairwell, but there’s no sign she’s heard her come in. There’s nothing, at first, just that same hollow gap in her memory that’d once possessed the time before, her old life, filled in now sporadically with half-remembered occurrences, as thin and disjointed as a spider web. There’s that same musty smell of the place which she’d thought might draw something out of her, but doesn’t, does nothing at all. Her stomach sinks. She should’ve known she’d get nothing, again, for the hundredth time. If she hasn’t remembered anything by now why should tonight be some sudden night of revelations?

Nothing, at first. Then her eyes fall on the railing, creep upwards towards the top of the stairs, and her blood goes cold as ice, veins crystallizing.

_Oh my God! Get off!_

_Grab it!_

_Laurel!_

Screaming. A crack. There’d been screaming; blood-curdling, bone-chilling, and then a _crack_. Her vision flashes, something forming in her mind’s eye. Flashes tinted with blue-green, everything shaded that eerie hue. It’d been nighttime and late winter, freezing cold, so cold she feels a chill shoot up her spine.

A body. A body sailing over the railing and landing with that same sickening _crack_. The splitting of bone. She can see it all, hear it, so vividly it’s like it was yesterday and she flinches, almost stumbles, as she comes to a stop to the side of the staircase.

_He's dead. You killed him, Michaela!_

_Me? H-he was coming at us._

_Yeah, and he was_ alive _, until you shoved him over the railing._

_I was protecting Laurel!_

_She was._

_Fine. Then you both killed him!_

I was protecting Laurel. I was protecting Laurel. Michaela – the Michaela from work, from their strange little mismatched group of friends. That’s her voice and she hears it suddenly, suddenly it’s _all_ she can hear, echoing around her skull relentlessly, merging with the screams into some twisted, bloody aria. She clamps her hands over her ears, desperate to make them stop. Tries not to sob.

And all at once she’s looking down at the wood floor, and there’s a pool of blood at her feet; thick and sticky and damning and _everywhere_. Blood staining the heels of her shoes. She jerks her head sideways, panicked, skin crawling, and sees the source of it – a body; a man’s body with the trophy lying next to it, the metal base coated with blood too. She can’t see the face, at first. The vision flickers in and out like it doesn’t intend to show her but then finally, she gets a clear look at it: at the crooked nose, large forehead, close-cut hair.

Sam. Sam Keating.

She can hear the screams again, louder and shriller this time, _God_ , the screams, they won’t stop and she’s going mad, going crazy, this must be-

_He's dead. He's dead. We have to go... Right now._

_He's dead._

_He's dead._

_He's DEAD._

The trophy. She remembers what it’d felt like in her hand suddenly; the heavy, cold metal. Deadly. Swinging it hard and hitting bone with another lethal _crack_. There’s blood on her hands too, all at once, and she’s standing before the sink trying to scrub them desperately but her hands are shaking, trembling wildly, so hard she drops the trophy in the sink because she can’t hold onto it. She can smell bleach. And the blood on her hands, under her fingernails, imprinted into the creases of her palms, won’t come off. It won’t wash off. She holds her hands up and they’re still bloody, still dripping everywhere, still warm, and she knows it’s not real but somehow it _is_ , somehow this is _all_ real.

She’d done this. The trophy. She killed him.

It was _her_.

She doesn’t hear Annalise calling out to her from the top of the stairs at first, just stands there in horror, tearful and sobbing with her bloody hands that are clean whenever she blinks, and the body that’s there but isn’t there and the trophy, the bloody trophy that’d killed a man, that _she’d_ used to kill a man. Disappearing and reappearing and flickering out of view. She doesn’t even notice the woman’s presence until she’s descended halfway down the stairs and come to a stop, eyebrows knit together.

“Laurel!” she calls out, finally loud and harsh enough to pull her out of her half-catatonic, nightmarish state. Laurel jumps, head snapping in her direction, and suddenly the blue-green tint on her world is gone, replaced by warmer hues of brown and pink and red in the bathrobe Annalise has wrapped around herself. The older woman stares at her like she’s gone crazy and she knows she looks like she has: sobbing in the middle of her living room past midnight for no reason, seeing things. Seeing things that aren’t real but _were_. “Laurel, what the hell are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

She doesn’t answer, at first. She can’t find her voice, and she feels so sick she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to speak again. It’s all so clear. She can still hear the screams. The gut-wrenching _crack_ , over and over, of the trophy, like it’s stuck on loop in her brain. The body. She sees it whenever she blinks, right there. Right in front of her. Still fresh. Still warm.

The blood on her hands. She can feel it. Feel it _all_.

“What… what happened here?” she breathes, a sob catching her voice on the way out. “W-what did I do?”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on in, you're going to see this fic getting updated WAY faster. Like, I'm talking every other day faster. The reason for this is one of the ep summaries for the second half of season 3 seems like it's hinting at something I've already written in this fic, which is a huuuuuge part of the ending and a part I'm super proud of, and god dammit it's MY ending so I wanna get it out first before the show steals it.
> 
> So, prepare for MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.

When Frank steps back into her apartment everything is dark and still.

There’s only one light on: over by her couch in the corner, casting its dim golden glow out far enough for him to just be able to discern the shape of the back of Laurel’s head next to it. She’s sitting still too, as still as the darkness around her, so still from a distance he can’t even tell for sure if she’s breathing.

“Laurel?”

He sets down his duffle bag full of clothes and it lands with a dense _thud_ , startling her, and he can see her jump at least a good few inches into the air, but eerily enough she doesn’t turn her head back to look at him, or even greet him at all; she just sits there, facing away from him. He’d gone back to his apartment, only long enough to gather up more of his clothes and a few other things; she’d told him she was going out with the others. Not to wait up for her.

She shouldn’t be back now. And she shouldn’t be doing… this. Whatever _this_ is.

“What’s goin’ on?” he asks as he draws closer, footsteps cautious. “Thought you were supposed to be out livin’ la vida loca with the rest of the-”

Frank stops in his tracks, the instant he circles around the front of the couch and catches sight of her face. There’re tears in her eyes, smudging her makeup. Her eyes are so red that she looks like she’s been crying for at least an hour, or maybe more, and it’s hard to tell through the darkness but she looks like she’s shaking, too, shivering in her dress, her shoes kicked off and tossed to the side. But it isn’t just the tears that make his stomach sink; it’s the look in her eyes, hollow and empty, like she’s looking at something a million miles away. Blank. Blank and dead and nearly corpse-like.

“Hey, what is it?” Frank says, throat tightening at the sight of her. He takes a step forward but for some reason has the sense he needs to keep his distance, not get too close and spook her. “What’s wrong?”

Silence; heavy and thick and falling on them in layers. Not pleasant at all, but suffocating. Finally, Laurel looks up at him and sniffles, hurt and something like betrayal flickering in those eyes of hers, her lower lip quivering.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she croaks, and she sounds so devastated, so destroyed, so _small_ , that it yanks on his heartstrings, threatens to rip the entire damn thing out of his chest. Instead it ends up lodged somewhere in his throat, his fingers and toes going cold all at once, as if something has cut off his circulation to every part of his body.

“Tell you what?”

“What I _did_.” She sucks in a breath and it trembles, mixes with a sob and makes her hunch in on herself, shrink right before his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me what I _did_?”

“What you did?” he echoes, sinking down beside her. “Laurel, what’re you talking about?”

“To Sam,” she says the word like it causes her pain, her breathes coming faster, panic gripping her. “Sam Keating, I… I killed him.”

Every inch of him goes tense. “You… Laurel, you-”

“So you knew,” Laurel sputters, inhaling sharply and slinking back away from him, recoiling with horror – at him or herself or both of them, he can’t tell. “You knew I killed someone?”

“You didn’t kill anyone, what-”

She shoots to her feet, fast as lightning, and starts to back away from him, jaw set, resolute.

“I remember it. I went to the house, tonight. I went there and I… wasn’t sure why. But when I did I remembered.” She’s red-faced, now; red-faced and distraught and bordering on hysterical. “I remembered the trophy. The one I used. The… the _blood_ on my hands, I could feel it and-” A sharp breath cuts her off. She’s shaking, now, shaking with disgust. At herself, at what she believes she’s done, her core vibrating with self-loathing. “I remembered seeing his body. I did it. Don’t lie to me and tell me I didn’t do it, I-”

“You didn’t do it!” he raises his voice and stands as well, approaching her, desperate to soothe Laurel, to stop this; make her stop believing she’d committed some horrible act she hadn’t. “You didn’t kill anyone, Laurel, listen to me. Calm do-”

“I remember it!” she hisses, so certain. So sure he can see it glistening in her eyes. “I-I remember swinging the trophy. And him… falling. I killed him, I…” She lets out a breath, eyes locked ahead in horror. “I killed him.”

She believes it, he realizes suddenly. She believes she did it because that’s how her brain has reassembled that night even though it’s all wrong, even though it’s been botched. _False memories_ – he remembers the doctors saying something about false memories. Confabulations of her life. Mismatched puzzle pieces shoved into places they don’t belong. She believes she killed Sam because she remembers doing it – actually _remembers_ doing it.

To her she _did_ do it. She killed a man and he’s not sure there’s a way to convince her otherwise, but goddammit if he isn’t going to try.

“Listen to me. _Listen_ ,” he tells her, adding an edge of firmness to his voice that makes her go still. He walks up to her, moves in close, hoping it’s close enough that she can look into his eyes and see he isn’t lying to her – and he _isn’t_. Not about this. He takes ahold of her upper arms, not hard enough to grab at her but enough that it makes her stop pacing and listen. “You didn’t kill anyone. That night at the house… it was the Puppy, okay? It was Wes. He had the trophy. _He_ was the one who did it. Not you.”

“Wes?” she shakes her head, disbelieving. “Why would Wes-”

“To save Rebecca. You remember Rebecca?” She shakes her head. “She was there too. That’s why you guys went there that night: she was trying to find evidence against Sam. Locked herself up in the… bathroom, or somethin’, with his computer, to pull files off of it, and he tried to kill her so Wes clobbered him over the head with the trophy. _Wes_ killed him. Not you.”

She just looks at him, jaw clenched, still unconvinced, still with that razor-sharp conviction in her eyes. “Why should I believe you?” He opens his mouth to answer, but she’s shaking her head again before he can, panting, almost gasping for air, trying to wrangle it into her lungs. “If… if I didn’t do it why do I _remember_ doing it?”

He releases her, taking a step back. He doesn’t feel like he can breathe, either; like everything he’s been running from, all those demons, all that death, has come crashing back in on him, and her, and _them_. He’d been stupid to think he could hide that from her forever; that she could live the rest of her life in blissful ignorance of all those dark times before. He should’ve known she’d remember one day.

He should’ve known and he should’ve been prepared but like a dumbass, like the dumbass he _always is_ , he hadn’t been.

“I don’t know,” he tells her, honestly. “I don’t know, I – the doc said somethin’. About false memories. How your brain could… put stuff together wrong.”

The idea seems to petrify her even more. She stumbles backwards again, looking almost like she might go toppling forward onto her knees, teary-eyed and staring at him the way she had the night he’d told her about Lila; with all that distrust, all that betrayal, all that brokenness.

“How do I know what’s real then?’ she blurts out, eyes darting around the room wildly as if she’s trying to recall memories and seeing them all over the place now, coming out of the walls, slinking towards her like demons. “H-how do I know if _anything_ I remember is real?”

He reaches out to her but she jerks back, almost violent. “Laurel… you gotta calm down-”

She lets out another breath, and with it goes what must be all the air in her lungs because she deflates, sags suddenly and seems to sway on her feet. She runs her hands over her face, then back through her hair, still gasping, still panting like she’s drowning, and he’s never had a panic attack but he knows this is what one looks like, had done a hell of a lot of research on amnesia and its side effects when the accident had first happened, to know how to help her. He almost goes to her again, starts to pivot forward, then thinks better of it and hangs back.

He’d done research, on how to help her. All that intellectual, technical bullshit.

But he doesn’t know how to reach her now. Not even close.

“I’m going crazy,” she sputters, backing away again. She meets his eyes, searching frantically for something in them; some kind of comfort, some reality she can cling to, to anchor herself. “I feel… I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

He goes to her and gently, ever so gently so as not to spook her, takes ahold of her arms again, guiding her back over to the couch and urging her to sit down. He kneels before her once he’s gotten her settled, taking her hand in one of his and placing the other on her cheek, to urge her to look at him.

“Hey. Hey, you’re not goin’ crazy, Laurel, look at me.”

She does, albeit reluctantly and slowly, dragging her eyes up to his like they’re the heaviest weights in the world.

“I-” She cuts herself off, swallowing, but calming down somewhat. “I don’t know what’s real, anymore.”

“I’m real. I’m here. And you’re real, and…” He drifts off, struggling to come up with the right words, what to say to console her. He manages a smile, though he doesn’t think it’s convincing. “This? What we got? It’s real too.”

“I killed someone.” Laurel looks so hurt, right then. So horrified, every inch of her skin vibrating with terror. He tightens his hold on her hand. “Or… I was there. I helped, did I-” She goes silent, catching her breath. “Did I help?”

“Laurel…”

“You know. You know what happened?” He nods, grimly. She raises her chin. “Tell me.” He hesitates and she senses it, and scoots forward somewhat, closer to him. “Please tell me what happened.”

He hesitates. He doesn’t want to, _God_ he wants nothing more than for her never to know, to stay in the dark, safe and happy and ignorant – but she can’t. Her memories are coming back to her whether they like it or not, fragmented and false and terrifying, and he can’t let her go on believing she’d killed Sam, believing she’s capable of doing something like that. Because she isn’t; he knows her, and he knows she’d never hurt anyone – not by choice, anyway. Once maybe he’d thought they were alike. Kindred spirits, dark in their own ways. But he knows better now.

She’s not capable of doing something like that. Hurting someone. Not like him.

So out comes the story, bit by bit. He tells it to Laurel in low, even tones, both of his hands clasped in both of hers, kneeling before her as if in a confessional. He tells her everything; not about Lila and not about him but about Sam, what they’d done that night, how they’d wrapped his body in a rug and burned it in the woods and cut it up and stowed it in half a dozen different dumpsters. And he doesn’t use those exact words, tries to ease the burn as best he can though it’s hard to, and it’s harder still to watch her face crumple as he describes it all, as though his words are calling back more and more memories and they’re hitting her from all sides, knocking the wind out of her. Killing her slowly.

By the end her eyes are red-rimmed, and her sobs have gone silent. She’s calmed down outwardly and is no longer shaking but she’s shaken to her core – that much is clear. Destroyed, in and out and breaking down before him, crumbling. This isn’t what he’d wanted, any of this. He’d wanted so desperately to protect her from that night, make it all go away, help her be normal again.

But he couldn’t protect her from her own mind, her own memories. He can’t.

“I did all that,” she says, finally. She sniffles, wiping at her eyes. “I helped kill him. Covered it up.”

“Sam wasn’t…” His throat tightens, a surge of anger at Sam Keating, at Annalise, at the whole _world_ rushing through him. “He wasn’t a good guy, Laurel.”

She looks at him with teary-eyed disbelief. “Just because someone isn’t a good person doesn’t mean you _kill_ them, Frank!”

“I know that, I know,” he soothes. Holds her hands tighter, silently imploring her to stay, stay with him.

Something dawns on her, right then, and Laurel shakes her head, stunned. “You knew. About all this. What I did, and you…” She exhales shakily. “You’re still here. Why don’t you… why are you _okay_ with this? With me?”

_Because I’ve done it too. Killed. Because I’m a monster – worse than you could ever be._

He shakes the thought away, unsure how to phrase what he wants to say. “’Cause I… Look, when I worked for Annalise I told you I wasn’t a lawyer. And I wasn’t. I did stuff. Stuff that… maybe always wasn’t legal, or right. And Sam, what he was, what he did… He was a monster.” _A monster. Like me._

“He killed that girl. Lila, right?”

The name makes his throat lock up. He swears to God all the blood drains from his face, and feels bile rise in his throat but he chokes it down, stoic as ever. Lila. His hands around her throat. Life seeping out of her eyes. Lila.

Her baby. _Lila_.

And all he can do is lie, again. Annalise had made him swear he wouldn’t lie to her and here he goes again, lying through his damn teeth, and he’s no longer really sure who he’s protecting here: Laurel or himself or the both of them, the line between right and wrong all hopelessly blurred. Probably mostly himself – but knowing would destroy her even worse. He remembers the look on her face the night he’d told her about Lila, the horrible, gut-wrenching brokenness. The betrayal. He can’t stomach that again.

He can’t _do_ that to her again.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, numbly, voice strained. Unable to look her in the eyes. He wonders if she notices, can tell he’s lying, and it _is_ a lie but it’s also sort of a half-truth. It’d been Sam; Sam and his blackmail and his power over him and the debt he’d owed. It’d been Sam but it hadn’t been _Sam’s_ hands around her throat, choking the life from her – no, that’d been _him_.

“You shouldn’t… you still shouldn’t be all right with this. With _me_ ,” she insists.

“I am.”

“You _shouldn’t be_ ,” Laurel hisses, then goes quiet, slumping in her seat, defeated and weathered by exhaustion. “You-”

“Hey. There’s nothing you could do that would make me stop lovin’ you, Laurel,” he says, before he can think it through, consider that maybe he shouldn’t say that, tell her he loves her even though he does, even though he does so much he thinks it could split him open right then. Kill him. “Not this, not anything. Not ever.”

“You knew. And you didn’t tell me,” she repeats, raising her chin, mustering up a bit of composure. “Why?”

“I… I didn’t want you to know. I knew what it did to you, the first time ‘round and…” He pauses. He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t explain himself; he doesn’t deserve to. He lied to her when she’d trusted him to give her the truth and he absolutely doesn’t deserve to. “I was tryin’ to protect you.”

Silence. Laurel doesn’t know what to say to that, what to _do_ with that, and he doesn’t have any more words to give her; he’s given her all his words, put his heart in her hands, hers to do with what she will; break and stamp on and ruin if she wants. He’d lied to her, kept things from her and this isn’t even the worst of it and still, still she looks so hurt he can’t take it. It makes something piercing and relentless clamp down underneath his breastbone, so hard it feels like his body is trying to pulverize him from the inside out.

“Can you, um,” she finally pipes up, sniffling again, “can you go?”

He goes still – still as death. He _feels_ dead, as soon as the words hit him, like they hollow him out and burrow into his chest and fester, leech the life out of him, like a tumor. “Laurel…”

“I’m not saying this is over. That we’re done, I just… I need to be alone tonight, I think.”

Frank nods, gravely. He understands. Doesn’t mean he likes it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t kill him. But he understands, so he stands, and he goes, forgoing any long, painful last looks back at her, any last supplications or attempts to persuade her. He’s not going to push her, force her to try to process all of his in just one night, let him stay. She needs time. Time for herself, away from him. However long she needs – he’ll give it to her.

He goes, and he shuts the door behind him, and suddenly he feels just as alone and helpless as he had all those months ago, the night he’d told her about Lila and she’d walked out his door, and out of his life.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter switches POV's toward the end, which was not intentional AT ALL. I must've had a stroke while writing and dicked it up big time. But. It's okay now.
> 
> Mostly.

In the stillness of her apartment it’s all she can see.

The blood, on her hands and seeping into the floorboards and gushing out of Sam Keating’s caved-in skull and _God_ , everywhere, it’s _everywhere_. She doesn’t move from the couch, sits there frozen and trembling with the scene before her, deathly still and trying to shake that memory; the persistent one, the thick, sticky blood on her hands as she’d washed them in the sink, scrubbed it out from underneath her fingernails, clawed at her palms to get it out of the creases. It’s so clear now, fading in bit by bit until it’s in all brilliant, blinding technicolor, so real it’s jarring. There’d been so much of it.

She’s seen that much blood before. She’s seen more. But she’d never done it. Caused it. Been the reason _why_.

And she hadn’t killed him. She _hadn’t_ , even though she remembers it, remembers so vividly swinging the trophy and landing the hit and watching him fall, heavy as lead. She remembers doing it but now Frank is saying she didn’t, it wasn’t her – it was Wes, Wes, who looks like he could never hurt a fly, all soft eyes and soft smiles and sincerity. She didn’t but she _did_ and she doesn’t know what’s real anymore, no longer has a steady grasp on reality; it’s slipping from her, descending into some dark, sinister whirlpool, all her sanity sucked down with it.

She didn’t kill him. She didn’t.

She did. She _remembers_ it.

She barely notices Frank leaving until the door closes behind him, loud as a gunshot, and she has a sudden, irrational urge to chase after him, beg him to come back, not to leave her alone in this state, but all at once she pictures his face and it looks like a mask, like nothing is real, like he's been putting on a veneer of normalcy this entire time. He’d said he hadn’t told her to protect her – how does she know he’s not lying about Sam to protect her still? If he’s telling her she didn’t kill him when she did, because she _remembers_ killing him? He might be lying to her. He probably is. She isn’t sure. Suddenly everything around her, her whole new life, everything in it feels like a lie and she can’t breathe, she can’t _breathe_ , her lungs are heavy and constricted by something pressing down hard on her chest.

It’s like waking up after the accident all over again. Waking up and not knowing anything for sure.

She considers going somewhere, to see someone. One of her doctors. A psychiatric hospital, if she has to; lock herself away for a week in some white room with four blank walls and a straight-jacket and dead-eyed orderlies. She’s going crazy and she knows it but what is she supposed to do, exactly, when she gets there? Explain to them that she’s remembering a murder she very possibly committed – or _helped_ commit? Confess to a crime and get them all sent to jail? Maybe they deserve it, the others. Wes. Maybe _she_ deserves it.

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t go anywhere; seeking help is a healthy coping mechanism and apparently she’s made up her mind she’s not a fan of those. Instead in seconds flat she’s gathered up her smorgasbord of prescription painkillers; all different bright, deceptively cheerful shades of pills, a veritable rainbow of narcotics, and popped the lid off one at random, dumping a more-than-generous handful out into her palm, tossing them back, and downing a swig of scotch to chase them, not caring if it kills her, if it does her in for good. She’s had to start taking more and more, recently, to feel them work, have them numb her like they used to. More and more and more, and she doesn’t know what she’ll do when she runs out.

Pill-popper. That’s what she is, what she’s become. As bad as her fucking stepmother.

But she shakes the thought away and does as all good pill-poppers do, and lies down on the couch and swallows a few more, and washes them down with more liquor, relishing the burn in her throat, the soft ache. At least it feels real. At least she _knows_ it’s real. And then there’s a haze that settles over her, slow but sure, and nothing feels real again but this time it’s a comforting, foggy sort of disassociation. She drifts, disconnects, floats and this time she lets herself, lets darkness roll over her in blankets of grey fog, drag her down. Drag her under.

It takes her, and she lets it.

 

~

 

She wakes up in the morning, unfortunately. Even though part of her had secretly been hoping she wouldn’t.

She wakes up a mess and just barely manages to pull herself together, tug on a skirt and blouse that only half-match, and drive to the office. It’s the last place on earth she wants to be, where everything had happened, where she had very possibly killed a man in cold blood, but she does anyway; she may be a murderer, but she’d rather not add _getting fired_ to her list of fuck-ups if she can avoid it.

Bonnie puts her to work as soon as she gets there, and for a while she buries herself in it, lets the lines of black and white text blur together, suck her in until her hands feel like cold robotic extensions of her body and her body feels like some foreign vessel altogether. She works like that for an hour or so, seeing black and white and trying to ignore the flashes of red in between the lines, the terror that sinks into her whenever she glances over at the stairway. And she’d never thought she would say this after the accident, ever, but she wishes so badly she could forget.

She wishes she’d never remembered in the first place.

Annalise walks through the front door close to one, and gives her a long passing look on the way to her office, but doesn’t stop to confront her, and for that she’s grateful.

Her gratefulness only lasts a few minutes, however, before Bonnie comes to a stop before her, arms folded, and tells her, “She wants to see you, in her office.”

She blinks, trying to seem less startled than she is. “Uh, did she say what about, or…?”

“No,” is all she gets. “But it seemed important. I wouldn’t keep her waiting.”

She nods, and Bonnie leaves her, disappearing into the next room, and Laurel eyes the door to Annalise’s office, all dark imposing wood and frosted glass, only for a moment, before raising her chin and steeling herself like she might as well be going into battle. She knows what she wants to talk about; she’d stumbled upon her crying hysterically in her house in the middle of the night, remembering everything. Remembering splitting her husband’s head open with a trophy.

Of course she wants to talk.

So, knowing she has no choice, Laurel goes, pushing open the door and stepping inside. Annalise is seated at her desk when she enters, and looks up at her with an expression she can’t read, although that’s one of the things she’s learned over the course of the past few weeks: she can never read her. She’s terrifyingly stoic right then, cold as ice, features set in stone, her hands folded on the desk, and Laurel shrinks a bit as she approaches, coming to stand before her.

“Have a seat,” she tells her, finally, and Laurel breathes a sigh of relief, doing as she says and sinking down into one of the chairs. Annalise is silent a moment, before she begins, voice low and measured. “I assume you know what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I’m sorry, about last night,” she says, a bit too quickly. She feels something well heavily in her throat, her limbs shaky and nervous, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. “I, uh… I don’t know what that was, I-”

“I do. You were remembering Sam,” Annalise tells her, cool as ever. “Weren’t you?”

She goes as rigid as a corpse, her heart locking up inside her with terror. “You…”

“I know what happened, Laurel,” she says, simple as anything, as if they aren’t discussing the murder of her own husband or anything out of the ordinary at all, and she looks so completely unfazed that it sends Laurel’s head reeling. “I know what you did. The four of you.”

“The others? Me and… Wes and-”

“Connor and Michaela,” she finishes, continuing matter-of-factly as she rises to stand. “You killed him and wrapped his body in a rug and burned it in the woods. You remember that?”

“I’m so…” She feels tears rush into her eyes before she can stop them, coming hot and fast. She’s trembling, now, shaking so bad she can feel her bones rattling beneath her skin. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Annalise says, almost soothingly as she circles around her desk and comes to a stop before her, leaning back against it. She folds her arms, heaving a weary sigh. “You may not remember Sam. But Sam was not a good man, or a good husband. He…” She drifts off, clenching her jaw, eyes suddenly distant like she’s looking at something a million miles away; a memory, maybe, before she lowers them with sudden resolve, turns them to iron again. “Let’s just say he deserved what he got.”

She knew. The fact hits her in the chest, knocking all the air out of her, slithering around her lungs like a boa constrictor and squeezing tighter with every breath she takes. Annalise knew. Frank knew. All the others knew. _Everyone_ knew.

Everyone’s been lying to her. Lying to her this entire time.

“You knew?” she breathes, horrified, skin crawling, envisioning their faces, Michaela, Wes, Connor, Frank. All of them, and suddenly she feels like she’s in a pit of vipers, surrounded by unseen enemies at every turn. “You were in on it too?”

“Not the deed itself. That was Wes. But the cover-up… Yes. I was.”

“Wes,” she repeats, breath coming faster, a sudden weight pressing down on her chest. “But I… I remember doing it. It was me, and Frank, he told me it was Wes too, but-”

Annalise furrows her brow. “It wasn’t you.”

“How do I know that’s the truth, though? I…” She raises her chin, exhaling shakily. “Everyone knew. We all… we all did this. _I_ did this.” Annalise opens her mouth but she keeps going, frantic. “This is all my fault.”

“You did not do this. Do you understand me? You didn’t.”

“Is that what you and Frank and everyone else decided to tell me?” she chokes out. “That I didn’t do it? He said… he was protecting me, not telling me. And now I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t believe what anyone tells me.”

Annalise is silent, for a moment, looking for once in her life like she doesn’t know what to say, how to help her – and Laurel doesn’t blame her. She wouldn’t know how to help herself, either; not when she’s half-slipping from reality, losing her mind. Then, finally, Annalise straightens her back and raises her chin, suddenly certain, like she’s made up her mind about something.

“He was. Protecting you. Frank may be an idiot,” she almost sneers his name, as if she can’t help but do so, but otherwise seems genuine, “but we all agreed not to tell you about Sam, that much is true. It ruined the others, what they did that night. Scarred them. They’ll never be the same again. And that’s why no one told you. We didn’t want you to go through that again if it could be avoided.” She pauses. “We thought we were helping, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I know you don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. You barely even know me. But you did not kill my husband, Miss Castillo. Do you believe me?”

She hesitates. Of course she does. But there’s something about the look in Annalise’s eyes, something deep, wide open, truthful; something she has reason to believe she doesn’t show others often, something she thinks she can trust more than her tattered, mismatched memories. She isn’t lying to her. She can hear it in the crystal-clear ringing of her voice, so certain, not particularly warm but _sincere_ , full of honesty.

She didn’t do it. She has to trust her, more than she trusts her own mind.

She has to.

“I do,” she says finally. “I believe you.”

“Good,” Annalise affirms, then stands and returns to her seat, clearly having nothing more to say to her. “Now get back to work. We need all the precedents you can dig up for this case.”

Laurel nods, and stands, heading for the door, but at the last minute she turns, frowning and glancing back at her.

“It was Lila, right?” she asks, prompting Annalise to look up from the papers on her desk and frown. “The girl Sam killed. That’s why you said he deserved it?”

Annalise doesn’t say anything, for the longest moment in the world. She looks like there’s a thought forming behind her eyes, something on the tip of her tongue, some unspoken thing, but before it can escape she bites it back, stops herself, and fixes her with another look she can’t decode the complexity of.

“Like I said,” is all Annalise mutters, before returning to her paperwork, “he wasn’t a good man.”

 

~

 

A day passes.

And somehow, some way or other, she ends up on his doorstep.

Frank doesn’t know why. He isn’t expecting it at all when he hears her distinctive rhythmic knock, three short raps, such a familiar signal of her arrival that it sends a bolt of electricity through his blood, crackling and sparking in his veins. He hadn’t called, hadn’t texted. Hadn’t done anything to contact her at all. She’d needed space and he’d known that; time to process things, to reacquaint herself with this new facet of her reality, this murder in her past.

But when he pulls open the door there she is, clad in what are probably her clothes from work, arms folded, fidgeting a bit awkwardly beneath his gaze. Her cheeks are flushed from the heat, hair ever so slightly windblown. She looks unsure, a bit like a doe assessing her surroundings in a forest, deciding whether or not she should bolt. Unsure of him.

Unsure of everything.

“Hey,” he greets, voice low and gentle, almost coaxing. Coaxing her to relax. To stay.

“Hi.” She gives him a shaky smile that stops just short of reaching her eyes, and clutches her purse to her side just a bit tighter, almost as if trying to hide behind it. He’s too stunned to move, too stunned to say anything more, and so she looks past him into his apartment, abruptly unsure. “Can I… come in, or-”

“Yeah,” he says, and steps aside hastily. “Yeah, ‘course.”

She stalks past him, into his little living area, shrugging off her bag and shucking her jacket from work, leaving her only in her blouse and pencil skirt. He watches in silence, hovering near the door, afraid to approach, spook her and send her running. He’s never been cautious like this with her before; he’d never wanted that distance between them, that disconnect and unfamiliarity even though after the accident, in many ways, it’d been inevitable. Maybe this was always coming, this distrust; her distrust of him, her doubt. He’d seen it with her and the others.

He’d never wanted to see it with _him_.

“Annalise called me into her office today,” she says, finally. “She told me she knew too. About Sam. What we did.” She pauses, lips pressed into a tight, grim line and voice steady. “Who else knows?”

“Bonnie,” he says, without hesitating; no lies, no nothing, everything between them laid out plain. “Asher too. That’s it.”

“Is that the truth?”

Her words are so sharp he blinks, then nods. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says, letting out a breath and allowing herself to relax, somewhat. “I, uh… Sorry. It’s just kind of hard to get used to the idea that I’m… complicit, in a murder. Which I don’t really understand why I did, at all. I…” Her voice breaks, wavers. “I wake up and this is what I’ve done. This is the life I have.”

Frank melts, all at once, eyes going soft and sad, and whatever chain is holding him back, making him keep his distance breaks, sends him across the room until he slowly, very slowly, comes to a stop before her, lips folded into a solemn frown. He doesn’t say anything, not at first; words don’t seem appropriate here and now, adequate for what he wants to express to her. So he stands there in front of her for a moment, not speaking, not touching her, just offering her his silent solidarity; his presence, and whatever comfort that might bring her, like he’d done once, in another life.

_Am I at least allowed to stand here, comfort you that way?_

_Fine._

He knows she doesn’t remember. That doesn’t matter.

He can remember for both of them.

“That night,” she says, suddenly, an eerie hollowness about her. “The night of the accident. I think… I wanted to die.” His stomach clenches, roils, and she shakes her head, lowering her eyes. “I don’t remember for sure. But I think I did. I think I did it on purpose, crashed the car. And I wish I had.” She gulps, not crying, and he wishes she would, wishes she would show some scrap of emotion instead of this terrifying nothingness. “I wish I’d never woken up.”

“Don’t say that,” he pleads, and he thinks he can feel tears in his eyes, beading there stubbornly. “Please don’t say that.”

“It’s not like I wouldn’t have deserved it. After everything.”

“You _don’t_ , you-” He cuts himself off, exhaling sharply. “I never… wanted you to go through this again. Knowin’ this, I…”

“You wanted to protect me,” she remarks, lowly, a look of grim understanding on her face that gradually morphs into equally grim mirth. “From what I did. And what would you’ve done, anyway? Looked me in the eyes right after I woke up in the hospital and told me I was a murderer?”

“I’m so sorry,” he tells her. “Sorry for lyin’. Sorry for all of it.”

Another moment of silence passes. Laurel breaks it again, voice soft and sorrowful, so hurt it kills him, carves out his insides and replaces them with some huge, gaping, pulsating mass of pain.

“Do you know what it’s like?” she asks, sounding so small, so sad. So lost. “To not be able to trust your own mind anymore? Or… anyone around you?”

“You can trust _me_.”

“Can I?” she asks, pointedly, like she doesn’t believe she can – and Frank knows she isn’t wrong. To doubt him, doubt this. Doubt her own reality. Doubt her entire world.

He just wants to fix it all for her, make things better. And he can’t. He can’t do anything and he feels so helpless right then it eats at him, makes him want to rip his hair out by the roots. Do something. _Anything_.

Frank nods nonetheless, with as much conviction as he can muster. “’Course. And this, what we got… It’s real. I promise.” He pauses, swallowing thickly and moving in closer. “You never gotta doubt me. Or doubt this. Ever.”

She thinks for a moment, then sighs, letting him move in closer, falling back into that intimacy so easily. She lowers her eyes, swallowing. “I’ve been… remembering things. I wasn’t telling anybody. Things about that night. Other things, too.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“I should have,” she murmurs. “I didn’t know what they meant. And it felt like you were lying to me. Like you weren’t telling me something.” She stops, a grave realization sweeping her features. “And I guess I know what that was, now.”

“From now on,” he says, voice abruptly firm, deeper, “you remember something, I’ll help you figure out what it means. No holdin’ back. Full disclosure. Anything. Everything.”

She raises her eyes to look at him, chin held high, shoulders squared, and her words are more of a command than a question; an order. “You promise?”

Briefly, Frank considers what he’s getting himself into, what he’s promising her; the vow he’s making. She’s remembering things, more and more, and who knows how long it’ll be before she starts piecing together Sinclair too. Or Wes shooting Annalise. Or Lila. Or Rebecca. Or every other awful thing she’s done under the tutelage Annalise Keating; her and her flock of murderous ducklings. If she remembers Lila he’s not going to be able to lie to her about it; he knows that sure as he’s breathing. He’ll tell her, tell her everything, like he’d promised Annalise, like he’s promising her now, and suddenly the end of their fool’s paradise seems so strikingly near it rattles him to his bones.

You can’t go back in time. He’d thought he could, that he was safe, that he’d been able to defy the laws of the universe and get a second chance, hide from the demons of his past. But you can’t go back in time, and he hasn’t. _They_ haven’t.

This is the present, now. This is only the beginning.

“Yeah,” Frank answers, and draws her close. And he means it. He does. “I promise.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pleaaaaase if you're reading, leave a comment/kudos and tell me what you think! It means more than you know.
> 
> We're starting to wrap this fic up, but for now... have a nice chapter of (mostly) fluff.

Things are different, after she remembers.

Different with Laurel. _Laurel_ is different. It’s like they’d taken a thousand steps forward, closer to her feeling normal again, closer to being where they were, and in the blink of an eye they’ve taken a million back. She’s quieter. More withdrawn. Like the walls between them that he’s been tearing down ever since she woke up have all been rebuilt, twice as high and a thousand times more impenetrable. Days pass, and they sleep in the same bed still but now there’s distance between them, distance in her eyes, as if she’s always in another place entirely when he’s lying beside her.

She wants to understand. Knowing everything seems to be the only way she can cope, process what she’s done, and so he reconvenes the rat pack in his place a week later, and stands back, listening as they tell her the story, guide her through that night. Help her understand, in a way he can’t. She listens, somber and quiet, digesting the information, turning it over in her hands and letting it sink into her skin, and after a while she asks them go to, wanting to be alone.

After the last of them file out, Laurel makes his way over to the bar in the corner and wordlessly pours herself a more than generous glass of bourbon. He watches from across the room as she sips it, back turned to him, obviously not much inclined to talk, and after a moment she goes for her purse on the coffee table, rummaging in it for a moment before withdrawing a seemingly endless bottle of pills and opening it. She pours some into her palm and pops them into her mouth, washing them down with a few sips of liquor, and he watches, feeling stupid and helpless.

Watching her destroy herself. Numb herself, numb her reality. Detach. Not knowing any way to stop it.

“You okay?” he asks after a moment, lingering by the couch and shifting awkwardly, though he knows she isn’t.

She nods, stiffly, but won’t look at him.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” She lets out a breath, taking another sip. “At least I know for sure what happened, right? Got a firsthand account, of everything.”

There’s a pause, long and pregnant and as heavy as a storm cloud lingering in the air above them. She takes another greedy, too-big sip, silent, not speaking. Everything about her – from her guarded stance to the way her jaw is locked tight, clenched – screams shutting down. She’s shutting down, shutting him out, retreating into herself; into a place he can’t follow her to. A place he can’t understand.

He doesn’t know how to help her, how to reach her. But he has try, try as hard as he fucking can with everything he has left in him.

Frank opens his mouth to say something, but she speaks first, voice low, with that same hollow timbre in it, in her eyes. “I’m friends with a bunch of murderers. That’s… all we have in common. And I’m one of them, and I’m trying to get used to it. Knowing this.” She shakes her head, takes another sip and sinks down onto the couch heavily, eyes still lowered. “And I can’t.”

“I know… how hard, all this must be,” he says, lowly, taking a seat next to Laurel and angling himself towards her. He presses his lips into a line, grave. “I know I’m never gonna get what it’s like. But you gotta believe me, Laurel, that night… You guys did what you had to do, okay? You were there, and I know you don’t remember it all. But you did what needed to be done.”

She grins, wryly, and raises the glass to her lips again. “So it’s the whole ‘murder but not a crime’ thing?”

He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t think he can. Instead he lets the quiet settle over them again, thick as anything, and again Frank lets her be the one to break it, doesn’t want to pressure her to speak.

“I keep waiting. To start feeling normal. I don’t… I don’t think I know how, anymore. It’s funny.” She stares down into her glass, morose. “All I wanted to do when I woke up was remember. Now all I want to do is forget. Remembering…” She drifts off. “Remembering just made everything worse.”

“Tell me what to do,” he chokes out, voice strained. “To make this better. I-”

“There’s nothing,” she murmurs, shaking her head faintly. Her eyes are red-rimmed but not glistening with tears, bags hanging beneath them, all her strength worn out of her. “You can’t… change with I did. What we did. I wanted to come to law school to do good, and all I’ve done was-”

“You’ve _done_ good,” he asserts, raising his voice slightly, enough to make her glance over at him. He pauses for a moment, licks his lips, then begins. “Remember that case I told you about? The one we argued about, first time we kissed, with the boy and his ma and his abusive piece of shit pops?” She furrows her brow, unsure for a moment, before her mind calls the memory back and understanding bleeds into her eyes. “We got him off. Now he’s… home with his ma. And happy and safe, and he’s got a chance to have a life. _You_ did that. _You_ slipped that juror the papers about nullification. _You_ got that mistrial for us. _You_ saved him.”

Her eyes soften, somewhat, and he swallows, not daring to reach out to her but keeping his voice firm, tone even.

“You’ve _done_ good, Laurel,” he repeats, sincere. “You’re not a bad person for doin’ this. And I know it seems like it, ‘cause you don’t remember it all. But you’re not. Please just-” He cuts himself off, voice catching in his throat. “Please believe that.”

She doesn’t answer, for a while, just stares straight ahead, unblinking, and he’s just about to start wondering if she’d ever heard him at all when she heaves a sigh, shrinking down a good three inches as it leaves her, and meets his eyes.

“Okay,” is all she says. “I’ll, uh… I’ll try.”

It’s not convincing, not really, but there’s something in the way Laurel eases back, relaxing, the tension in her muscles rolling away and falling off her, that makes Frank think maybe his words have hit their mark, if only slightly. And maybe he doesn’t know how to reach her. Maybe it’ll take time to figure out how to make this better, make things normal again, but he’s gonna do it. He’s gonna do it and he’ll tell her the truth, any truth she wants, whenever she asks.

He tries not to feel that sense of impending doom, again. Tries to stamp it down, shove it to the back of his mind and cram it into some remote corner, and after a moment he mostly succeeds, managing to give her a halfhearted grin.

“You comin’ to bed?”

She shakes her head, takes another sip.

“No, I’ll stay up for a bit.” A pause. She purses her lips in contemplation, lines patterning her forehead. “Every time I sleep I dream about it, so.”

Frank nods, and tries to think of something else to say but fails. No words seem to really fit what he wants to say; he wants to reach out and hold her, hold her close, remind her how much he loves her, but he stops himself. Knows he can’t.

A thousand steps forward and a million back. And he’ll wait, to make up that distance again. He’ll wait forever if he has to.

He makes himself scarce, heading for the bedroom and changing into a pair of sweatpants to sleep in and lying down, trying to force his body to shut down, but his mind refuses to cooperate. He loses his grasp on time, and in the grey stillness it feels fuzzy, barely real. A while passes – an hour or so, maybe – and still he doesn’t hear the soft sounds of footsteps padding into the bedroom, or feel the give of the mattress underneath a body as Laurel slides beneath the sheets next to him.

Eventually, restless, he reemerges, and finds her lying on his cold leather couch, knees tucked up close to her body, empty glass of bourbon lying abandoned on the table. She’s still in her jeans and blouse, but he doesn’t disturb her, or move so much as a muscle to wake her; he knows she’s had a hard time sleeping, since remembering. And it may just be because of the booze, or because of the pills, or most likely because of both, but he’s grateful for any peace her tortured mind can get.

Even if this isn’t quite peace, this state she’s in. Not even close. She looks fitful even in slumber, like she’d looked at the hospital all those months ago, and he thinks maybe they’re as good as back to where they were then, a billion miles apart.

He’s never been so close and so far away. And it guts him.

Frank watches for a moment, troubled, before finally he sighs and goes for this closet, withdrawing a few blankets and bringing them back with him; he knows enough to know she’ll eventually get cold on the unforgiving leather. He drapes them over her gently, and turns off the light beside the couch, bathing the room in darkness and letting it pour over her.

He leaves her, like that. It’s all he can do.

 

~

 

Thursday evening after work, he tries to get her just a bit closer to her new normal.

He shows up at her door, clad in a three-piece suit, hair slicked back, and tells her, straight-faced, “C’mon. Get ready. I wanna take you somewhere.”

Laurel, who is in sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt and looks fairly unwilling to change that, furrows her brow, but steps aside and lets him in.

“… Where?”

He comes to a stop in her living room, and winks, coy. “’S not a surprise if I tell you now is it?”

She still doesn’t look convinced, and folds her arms, stiff and almost standoffish, but mostly confused.

“Forgive me if I’m not exactly a huge fan of surprises, these days.”

“Right. Yeah, that wasn’t what I…” He sobers up, understanding immediately. “I, uh, thought we’d do meet the parents night. My folks have been dyin’ to see you again. Every time I call they bring you up.”

She blinks. “Your parents?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fun. You’ll get your ear talked off by my ma and a good Italian meal in you. Can’t hurt.”

“Oh,” is all she says, at first, then goes silent for a moment before she rubs her lips together, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “That’s kind of a big step.”

“Maybe,” he admits, shrugging. “You met ‘em before, though. And they loved you. And I know they’ll love you again.” She still doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, brow furrowed, so much uncertainty about her, and he’s quick to relent, not wanting to press. “We don’t have to. We can order in, I just-”

“No,” she says, suddenly sure. She lets her arms drop back down to her sides eventually, relaxing her stance and opening up. “It’d be good for me to get out of the house for once.”

“Good,” he says, grinning back. “Just be ready to eat ten pounds of pasta and wake up that much heavier in the morning.”

She chuckles under her breath, and turns to head down the hallway, disappearing into her bedroom. A while later she reemerges, dressed in black jeans and a pale pink sleeveless chiffon blouse, hanging loosely off her body but somehow making her look almost angelic, impossibly light, floating as she walks. And she looks paler, and thinner, gaunter even though she’s put on makeup, and she has been since the accident but somehow he barely notices, can see only that dark hair framing her face, her blue-grey eyes with that glimmer of strength he’s always adored about her; flickering like a dying ember now, but still very much present. Things are different now, he knows, and there’s no way around the fact, and he can feel that dread in his gut, that impending, sinking, ever-present sense of doom, that someday soon all this will be over, that she’ll remember Lila and cut him out of her life again – for good this time. But all that can wait.

All that can wait, because she’s here now, and this isn’t about him. And he loves her so much he can’t exactly breathe, right then, in so many different ways his chest and lungs feel full of holes from every emotion flowing in and out of them.

“Wow,” he blurts out, dumbly but sincerely. “You look…”

“Like I need a shower?” she deadpans, grinning crookedly, and he chuckles, stepping forward and letting his hands come to rest on her hips.

“Yeah, that’s exactly how I was plannin’ on winning your heart: telling you you look like you need a shower,” he teases, then grows serious. “Beautiful. I was gonna say beautiful.”

She lowers her eyes, unconvinced. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not lyin’. You do.” He pauses, a grin pulling at his lips. “You are.”

“Yeah, well,” she mutters, that same humorless smile on her lips. “I don’t really feel like it much anymore.”

He frowns, more bothered by that than he can ever say. He knows she doesn’t. He’s seen the air of sadness hanging over her, her loss of interest in things, the dullness in her eyes. He knows she isn’t happy. Knows she doesn’t feel beautiful, anymore, even though she is – God, she’s so beautiful, and he doesn’t know how to tell her that, communicate that to her properly; he doesn’t think words are enough to contain the sentiment. He wishes, right then, so desperately, that she could see herself how he sees her, through his eyes, with all that adoration. He wishes she could know. She hadn’t ever really known before, either, just how stunning she was. _Is_.

He'd never told her – or at least not told her enough. And that’s another mistake he’s sure as hell never going to make again.

“Look…” he says. “Look, I know you don’t. But you are. Sometimes all I wanna do is look at you. Never stop. And maybe you don’t see it too, and… I wish you could. But you are.” He grins, small and subdued. “Take it from the guy who’s madly in love with you, okay?”

It’s the first time he’s really mentioned loving her, being _in_ love with her. He hadn’t, before, not wanting to spook her, or make her feel like she’d have to say it back, that she was obligated to reciprocate. But it doesn’t spook Laurel as far as he can tell; if anything it makes her perk up, a smile creeping onto her lips slowly but surely, matching his own, taking root in her eyes and blossoming there too.

“You don’t have to win me over,” she tells him, laughing softly. “I’m already your girlfriend.”

“Figured it can’t hurt,” he says with a playful shrug, then nods at the door. “Now c’mon. We better not be late. My ma gets cranky and boxes my ears when I make ‘em wait to eat.”

 

~

 

It feels, for the hundredth time since the accident, like going back in time. Déjà vu.

Back to that first night he’d brought her home with him, all those long months ago. Holding her hand and dragging her up onto the stoop unsuspecting, and leading her into the pit of chaos that was a typical Thursday night Delfino family dinner. She’s been adorably flustered and properly terrified, but she’d fallen into a rhythm with his family so easily, like she’d belonged there all along. He can remember the flush on her cheeks, the sounds of her laughter over dinner as his father had piled a veritable mountain of spaghetti on her plate; free, deep, raucous laughter he’d never heard from her before.

He’d thought many times before then that he was falling in love with her, he remembers. But that was the night he’d really realized it, watching her with his family. The night he’d realized just how far in he was over his head.

And he realizes that all over again, the instant they step through the door.

He’d called beforehand, told his folks not to be too loud or pushy with her or mention the accident, and they heed his advice somewhat, but not very well. Laurel hasn’t even taken two steps inside before all five feet three inches of his ma is upon her, wrapping her arms around her and drawing her into a hug, and not giving Laurel much choice in the matter.

“Laurel, honey!” she cries, overjoyed. “Oh, we’re so glad to see you again.”

Laurel tenses, initially, then relaxes and draws back a bit awkwardly. “It’s, uh… It’s good to be back, Mrs. Delfino.”

“Please, call me Gina,” she urges, clasping her hands together with a happy sigh. “It’s so wonderful to see you here again. We’ve all missed you. Frankie here-” She stares at Frank, narrowing her eyes and placing a hand on Laurel’s arm to guide her deeper into the throng of people, while glaring back at Frank and wagging her finger, “he’s been keeping you from us.”

Frank follows down the skinny hallway toward the dining room, dodging one of his little cousins scampering after a dog, and frowning. “Ma-”

“Oh I know, I know. He thinks he was tryin’ to protect you from our crazy,” she jokes, glancing at Laurel with a wink and raising her voice over the cacophony of voices. “But let me tell you, long as you’re involved with a Delfino boy there’s no escapin’ our crazy. Now sit! Let’s eat. Get a good meal in you. Where’s the man of the house, huh?”

“I can only roll so fast, y’know!” his father’s voice comes from the doorway on their left, laughing. He comes to a stop at the table, and when he sees Laurel at Frank’s side his eyes light up, and he bellows another laugh. “There she is! Miss Laurel. We’ve missed you, y’know. Don’t leave us hanging like that again, or else my wife here will personally hunt you down and deliver you some of her cookin’.”

Laurel blinks, surprised, still not looking entirely comfortable in this place with strangers fawning over her at every turn, but she seems to melt a little at that, and breaks out into an easy smile as Frank pulls out a chair at the table for her.

“I won’t,” she says with a chuckle, warming up to him already. “I promise.”

The rest of the family migrate to the table not long afterward, and Laurel finds herself at the center of another mob, this one including his grandma, who kisses her on both cheeks and hugs her tight. At first it seems to overwhelm Laurel, all the activity, all the new faces, but after a while as they start to eat she relaxes, laughing courteously at his dad’s awful jokes and protesting feebly every time his ma shoves another plate of food at her, but eventually giving in and accepting. He doesn’t do much talking, for once; just watches her from across the table while sipping a glass of wine. And he sees that flush on her cheeks, again. That light in her eyes that’s been absent since she remembered Sam. That spark that’s so undeniably and distinctly _her_.

After they finish up he goes to help his mother in the kitchen, leaving Laurel with his dad and grandma. They wash the dishes at the counter for a while, chatting idly, before she pauses and turns to him, suddenly serious.

“How is she?” she asks. “Doing better?”

He nods, as he finishes drying a plate and sets it aside. “Yeah. I think so. It’s been hard. She didn’t remember me. Or anything. And now she’s started rememberin’ stuff, and it’s just… It’s been hard.”

“You’re bein’ good to her, though?” his mother demands, pointedly. “Takin’ things slow? Not pressuring her?”

“’Course. Yeah, no, I’d never-” He cuts himself off, letting out a breath and meeting her eyes. “I’d never do that, ma, I-”

The words almost slip off his tongue on their own – _I love her_ – and he stops himself before they can. But his mother is perceptive as always and gives him a sly look, slinging the dish rag back over her shoulder and folding her arms.

“You what?”

He shakes his head, sheepish, and turns back to his work. “Nothin’.”

“Don’t you _nothin’_ me,” she snorts, and stalks over to him, eyebrows raised. “I know that look on a man. You love her.”

Frank fidgets, but doesn’t bother denying it; his mother has always known him, been able to read him as easily as a book, and as much as it bugs him sometimes he can’t tell her she’s wrong. She knows she isn’t, anyway; that much is clear to see.

“Yeah,” he admits, finally, setting down a wooden spoon and turning it over in his hands in contemplation. He sighs, again. “Yeah, I do. Just… don’t go sayin’ that so loud, okay, she’s right out there-”

“Oh, I knew it!” she declares, ecstatic, and places her hands on his cheeks. “My baby’s in love.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he relents, shrugging her off but grinning. “C’mon, ma, cut it out.”

“Don’t tell your mother to cut it out,” she scolds good-naturedly, but backs down, returning to her spot at the sink. “I’m happy for you. And her. You know how much everyone loves her. Like one of our own. And it’s good you two’ve made it work, considering… everything that’s happened. Her accident.”

He’s listening, vaguely, but he finds his eyes gravitating toward Laurel where she sits, out at the table talking to his dad, sipping a glass of wine. He has a near-perfect line of sight to her, and before he knows it his mother’s voice is ebbing out of his consciousness, fading to white noise. _Every_ sound is ebbing out of his consciousness, and he can hear only the beating of his own heart, the pounding of blood in his ears as its pace quickens, and he watches her, chest clenching. She looks happy – happier than she has in weeks. Maybe the happiest he’s seen her since the accident. She looks so much like herself, like the girl he’d first met all those months ago, bright-eyed and vivacious.

She’s happy – and that’s all he wants, ever. Her to be happy. Find happiness. However she goes about it.

Even if one day it means she’ll leave him. That’s all he wants.

“-and, you know,” his mother’s voice cuts into his reverie, stirring him from his thoughts when she strides over and leans in close to his ear to whisper, “if you want your grandmother’s ring, we have it right here at the house. I’ll give it to you. Tonight. In fact, I’ll go get it now. And if you don’t want it now? Just keep it-”

Finally, he comes back to himself and shakes his head, stepping in her path.

“Woah, woah, hey, don’t jump the gun here. We’re takin’ things slow. Slow as she needs.” He pauses, and grins. “I’m not sayin’ never. Just… not right now.”

His mother grumbles but ultimately lets the matter go, and for a while they return to their task: her washing the dishes, him drying and putting them away. It’s easy, mindless work, and after they’ve finished he peeks back out into the dining room – only to find the chair Laurel had occupied now empty, and his father talking to one of his cousins instead. He furrows his brow and steps into the next room, looking to the older man when he still doesn’t spot Laurel anywhere.

“Where’d Laurel go?” he asks, and his father shrugs.

“Said she was steppin’ out. I didn’t see where she went.”

He frowns, making his way out in the living room and scanning it too, and again coming up empty. Finally, on a hunch, he goes for the front door and pulls it open – and when he does he finds Laurel seated on the little concrete stoop, staring off into the night, back turned to him. She looks back when she hears the door open, and gives him a distant little smile as he steps out, as if he’s interrupted her in the midst of some thought.

“Hey,” he greets, and sinks down next to her, the muggy, humid night falling on him in layers, making sweat bead on his forehead.

“Hey,” she says back, softly.

“You okay?”

Laurel nods. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just loud in there.”

He nods. She’s been more sensitive, since the accident, to loud noises and busy places and crowds. Things seem to tax her more easily, overload her systems more quickly, and so he nods, apologetic.

“Sorry. We’re pretty much textbook obnoxious Italians.”

“It’s okay,” she says, chuckling. “I like everyone. Your mom and dad especially.”

“Yeah? Good,” he replies with a grin. “Sometimes they can come on a little strong, first time ‘round.”

“They did,” she admits, but doesn’t look troubled or ill at ease. Her smirk grows into a smile, almost showing her teeth. “But I’m used to not knowing people who know me, by now.” She pauses, looking over at him. “I’m glad I came tonight.”

He smirks, nudging her arm playfully with his elbow. “See? Toldja everyone loved you.”

“They’re all just… so nice. Not like my family.” The grin falls from her face, and for a second something flickers in her eyes, before disappearing just as quickly. “Pretty much the only sound you hear at Castillo family dinners is forks and knives scraping against the plates.”

He shrugs. “You hear that here too, believe me. Think my ma was tryin’ to fatten you up or something.”

She laughs. “I feel like I’m gonna explode, so. It worked.”

“She’s gonna send you home with leftovers, too. Even if you try to say no – so don’t bother.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Pick my battles.”

“It’s prolly smart.” He grows serious, all at once, eyeing her closely. “I’m glad you came tonight too.”

Laurel hums softly, contently, and they lapse into silence. In the distance a few streets over, sirens blare faintly. At the end of the street a dog barks, and Frank listens, looking out into the summer night with a little grin on his face, content with the silence. Content to do nothing more than simply share this moment with her.

“Was this the house you grew up in?” she wonders aloud eventually, and he nods.

“Yeah,” Frank answers, and points across the street, at a similar house to this one. “That house right there is where the crotchety old geezer Mr. Fitzpatrick used to live, which me and my cousins would egg every Halloween. This,” he continues, patting the concrete next to him, “is where I had my first kiss at fourteen with Emily Abramowitz, when my tongue got caught in her braces and we had to enlist my ma to help get it out.”

That earns him yet another laugh. “Oh my God, that sounds awful.”

“It was,” he concurs, with a grimace. “Not an experience I particularly wanna repeat.”

“Well,” she says, teasingly, lowering her voice and narrowing her eyes. “It’s a good thing I don’t have braces, then.”

Her meaning is clear, made even clearer by the look on her face, filled to the brim with desire she isn’t even remotely trying to hide. A light breeze blows through, right then, blowing a few strands of her hair here and there, tumbling around her face, in front of her eyes. She looks so beautiful, right then, all flushed cheeks from the summer heat and bitten lip, and so he kisses her, slow, light; not really anything more than a peck. It feels so innocent, somehow. So good. Refreshing, like he’s a stupid lovesick fourteen-year-old all over again.

He kisses her, because it’s all he can do. Frank doesn’t think it’s possible to look at her right then and do anything _other_ than kiss her.

She smiles against his lips, into their kiss, and she’s still smiling when they break apart. There’s so much light in her, suddenly, and since Sam she’s looked so hopeless, so sad, so lost and haunted. Seeing her like this again makes him so irrationally, stupidly happy. Downright giddy. Even if it can’t last.

He doesn’t care. He’ll make this last as long as he can.

“Let’s get back inside,” he says, after a moment, cocking his head to one side. “Don’t want my parents thinkin’ we ran off to bone out here or anything.”

She feigns confusion. “Oh, we didn’t? Was I… misreading the situation, then?”

It makes him so happy to hear that, hear her sense of humor, her wit returning; one of the things he’s always loved about her. But he doesn’t remark on it, and instead only smirks.

“Think I’ve had enough porch sex for one lifetime.”

He stands and helps Laurel up, and once she’s standing she raises an eyebrow. “Shame. Considering I don’t remember the aforementioned porch sex.”

“Mmm,” he hums, and draws her close. “In that case then, I think we can work something out. Y’know. At a later date.”

Laurel just laughs, and lets him curl an around arm her, and walks back with him into the fray.


	17. Chapter 17

Things are okay, for a while.

Just okay. She’s okay. She has good days and she has bad. Days she manages to block out all the creeping thoughts of what she’s done, keep them at bay, ever lurking under her skin, and days she can’t stop them from coming, invading her every thought like cancer in her brain, keeping her up for hours on end at night. The screams. Blood. Fire. Cold. All of it playing on an endless, gory loop.

In her dreams sometimes she’s the one they wrap in the old rug and burn. Or sometimes she’s Lila Stangard, with two hands wrapped around her throat, a face hovering above hers – but she can never make it out.

It's always black. Fuzzy and indiscernible. She never knows why.

But she has good days and she has bad. And a month passes, and slowly, very slowly but surely, the good start to outnumber the bad. She spends her days at work with Annalise three times a week, and the rest at the law library studying, re-teaching herself everything she’d forgotten as best she can. Sometimes she goes out with the others, and eventually she starts feeling almost normal with them too – as long as she’s able to forget the blood and death that bonds them, the only real reason she’s friends with any of them. She keeps remembering, too. A month passes, and she keeps remembering more and more, the holes in her past steadily filling in, that fuzzy expanse of time growing clearer.

Frank helps her, as best he can. She tells him fragments. Gives him vague descriptions; sometimes a place, a scene, a string of words, or even just a sound. Sometimes he knows. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he spends hours puzzling over the clues, trying to use his own mind to supplant the things she’s lost, only to come up with nothing.

But he tries. He tries, for her, tries to remember for the both of them, and she couldn’t ask for any more.

“I remember… a church,” she murmurs one night, during one of their little sessions – even though the word _session_ feels far too clinical, and there’s nothing cold or impersonal about this. She’s lying in bed, on her side facing him, and he’d set aside the book he was reading to focus his attention on her. “Big. Gothic-looking. I remember going there.”

Frank thinks for a moment, taking her hand and playing idly with her fingers. “Oh, yeah. We had a client. Killer priest. He bludgeoned another priest to death with one of those incense holder things, in the actual church.”

She gapes. “Oh my God, that’s… awful.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, distant, distracted by their joined hands. “It was pretty brutal.”

They’re silent, a moment, before she speaks again.

“Moose heads,” she mutters sleepily, out of nowhere, staring at where their fingers are joined. “I remember being somewhere with taxidermy moose heads too. A lot of them.”

“’Nother client. Wacko old guy. He was on trial for killin’ his wife – which he didn’t do. Killed his first wife, years before, but not her.” He pauses, meeting her eyes, watching her as she sews her fingers into his, comparing the size of their palms absentmindedly. “You cracked the case for us, actually.”

She blinks. “I did?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “You figured out it wasn’t him, ‘cause he was a hunter. He knew how to kill – and whoever’d killed his wife was sloppy. You got us a solid defense. Saved our asses.” He winks at her, grinning. “That was when I knew I had good taste, pickin’ you.”

Laurel scoffs. “Oh, so you’re taking credit for my accomplishments?”

“Nah,” he says, shaking his head. “’Course not, that was all you. Being observant. Noticing the little things. You always did. You do now, too. And you’re smart. Way smarter ‘n I’ll ever be, for the record.”

She lowers her eyes, but smiles, a bit playful. “I’m not that smart.”

“Yeah you are,” he says, reaching over and tugging her onto him. She makes a soft sound of surprise, which quickly morphs into a laugh. He doesn’t kiss her, though; he just holds her, half on top of him, and it’s not overly intimate, seeing as they’re both fully dressed in sleepwear and sweats, but he doesn’t seem to mind, seems to just want to feel her. “You’re so smart it’s crazy. Smarter than everyone in that office combined.”

Laurel laughs softly, lowering her eyes, gnawing on her lip in contemplation. She keeps herself propped up on top of him, face to face, so close it’s jarring, and for a while she just looks at Frank, taking in the sight of his damp, tousled hair and blue eyes, so bright they gleam. He’s looking back at her, softly – so softly she can feel his gaze on her like it’s his hand, caressing her face, running over every inch of her like he’s trying to commit her to memory, and she doesn’t know why, and she doesn’t ask. She thinks for a while, too, collecting up the bits and pieces and tiny fragments she’s come up with lately, sifting through them. Trying to find something meaningful, something odd, out of place in her mental filing cabinet – and quickly, she does.

“What is it?” he asks, finally, reaching up to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ears.

She shakes her head, looking away. “It’s… I don’t know. Something I remembered. It might not even be real, but-”

“Tell me.” He grins, pausing, letting his hand linger near her ear, fingertips dancing across it. “Maybe I’ll know.”

“I remember… duct tape. And a bathroom. Like I helped tie someone up, once.” She stops, pressing her lips into a tight line. “Did I?”

Frank hesitates, and it’s a palpable hesitation, like he’s trying to figure out if he should tell her or not, keep this from her, keep her safe. But he’d promised not to lie to her, not anymore, about anything – so eventually he nods, opening his mouth, telling her the story about Rebecca. She’s heard the name before in passing but never asked for elaboration, and as the words leave his lips she feels her chest tighten, stomach roil with terror, dread. But outwardly she stays calm. She feels numb, almost, her senses deadened and dulled, half of what they were before.

“You guys thought she did it. Killed Lila.” His voice is strained, suddenly, and he stops for a second before continuing. “And she threatened to go to the cops about Sam. So you guys taped her up. And then you brought her to the house, and we kept her here, for a while. And…”

He drifts off. Laurel frowns, feeling panic shoot through her veins. “Where is she now?” Frank doesn’t answer, won’t look at her, and so she firms up her voice, raising her chin. “Frank?”

“She ran,” is all he says, finally. “Got out and disappeared. No one’s seen her since.”

It doesn’t add up – any of it. Rebecca escaping, disappearing. Not going to the police afterward. That equation doesn’t compute. She _should’ve_. It would make sense, after what they’d done to her. After what she’d helped them to do to her. And Frank had said he wouldn’t lie to her, sure, but he won’t look at her either, won’t meet her eyes, and that’s all she needs to see to know it isn’t true.

“What really happened to her?” she asks, eerily calmly, evenly.

A pause. Then-

“She’s dead.”

She should be horrified. And Laurel can feel her stomach roiling, twisting and clenching inside her, but at the same time she feels numb. Indifferent. Another murder. Another death. She no longer knows what kind of world she lives in, what kind of life she leads. She can’t understand any of this and part of her has simply stopped trying, stopped trying to piece together this bloody puzzle because all it will ever do is drive her mad.

“Did I do it?” is her next question, just as calm and simple.

“No. No, you’d never, you-” He stops himself, frowning, still tracing her face with his finger. He looks so troubled, so weighted down and sad to have to tell her these things, tell her about the things she’s helped do, the crimes she’s committed, the blood on her hands. “It was Bonnie.”

She receives the news just as calmly – even though she shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t be able to talk about murder so nonchalantly, like it’s nothing at all, just a typical topic to be brought up during pillow talk. But then she pictures Bonnie, with all her mousiness, all her silence and quiet violence, all her secrecy, and she thinks, maybe, somehow, deep down she’d known all along something was off about her. Maybe deep down she’d known something was off about her new world from the start – her new world and everyone in it, including herself.

Laurel tries to feel scared. But she doesn’t. She just stays still, resting on his chest, looking at him plainly.

“The others can’t know,” he tells her, and he’s just as calm as she is, and she wonders, for a flicker of a second, if something is off about him, too, if the darkness she sees in him sometimes is real or just imagined. “Especially Wes. If he knew…”

“I won’t say anything.”

Silence fills the air – not particularly comfortable or uncomfortable; just present. Just there, hanging between them. He strokes her cheek, plays with a strand of her hair, and she lets her hands wander aimlessly across his chest, eyeing him silently and feeling, somehow, like she can understand him perfectly without a word. Like they don’t need to talk at all right then to communicate.

Frank is the one to end it, brows knit together with concern. “You okay? About this?”

“I think, if I remembered…” She drifts off, shaking her head, speaking almost as if in a trance, a million miles away. “If I remembered being there. If I remembered her, and everything… I’d be upset. But you’re just telling me this. Secondhand. It’s like a story. And I don’t really remember being there for any of it. I just feel… detached.” She pauses, lips pulling into a frown. “I’m a monster. And after Sam, what we did, everything you told me, I don’t even feel surprised.”

“You’re not a monster,” he urges, lowly. “Please don’t ever say that about yourself.”

She lets out a sigh, closing her eyes and turning her face into her palm.

“Can we not talk about this anymore? Any of this? What I did…” She clenches her jaw, suddenly determined. “I want to move on. Let it go.”

“Okay.” Frank nods, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “Yeah. Whatever you want.”

Laurel lets out another breath, then rests her head on his chest, turning it sideways, listening to the steady, rhythmic pounding of his heart, letting it lull her closer to sleep. It feels so easy, to be here with him. So natural. She remembers the terror she’d felt, when she’d first awoken and looked into his eyes, at a man she didn’t recognize; a man who was a stranger to her, and there’s none of that fear now, none of that unfamiliarity. She feels like she’s been with him forever, like she’s known him her entire life.

She thinks there are still things between them, lurking just beneath the surface, hidden out of sight. Things he maybe isn’t telling her. He’d called her observant and she’s been noticing things, little things about him; details he leaves out, subjects he doesn’t seem to want to discuss, topics he dodges artfully, but dodges all the same. But those can wait until tomorrow. She’s spent so much time recently wondering about everything that’d happened before, trying to recall the memories she’d lost, trying to remember the past, that part of her has almost forgotten how to live in the present.

And she just wants to _exist_ in this moment, for now. She just wants to exist with him.

“Would you call me crazy,” she says, suddenly, turning her head to look at him, “if I said… that I think I love you, a little bit?”

His eyes light up. “Yeah?”

“Mmm hmm,” she hums, breathing him in. “Yeah.”

Frank doesn’t say anything for a moment. He looks troubled, almost, and she frowns, bewildered. “What?”

“That’s you talkin’, right?” he asks, out of nowhere. “You want this? Not just… ‘cause you think you should, or-”

“If I didn’t want to be with you,” she tells him plainly, “I would’ve left a long time ago. And everything is so… confusing. And I feel like I don’t really know myself, anymore. But I know I want to be with you.” Her voice is firm, words quietly emphatic. A smile creeps onto her lips. “And yeah, this is _me_ talking.”

“Good,” he says, tugging her just the tiniest bit closer. “’Cause I think I love you a little bit too.”

She leans in, kissing him deeply, and draws back only long enough to tease, “Only a little bit?”

“So much,” Frank grunts, as she makes her way closer to him, throwing her leg across his torso so that she’s on top of him completely. He says the words with such sincerity, so quickly, no hesitation, like he’s been holding them back for ages. Like he’s been waiting forever to say them again – and the realization that he probably has, that he’s been waiting for her to say them first, waiting until she’d be comfortable hearing them again, makes her shiver with delight. “I love you so much, Laurel.”

And Laurel pounces again, kissing him harder. Pulling him under.

And he lets her. Of course he lets her.

 

~

 

She ends up at a bar with the others, two nights later.

Laurel isn’t overly enthused about doing anything other than snuggling up underneath a blanket with a book and/or a Frank on a Friday night, if she’s being honest, but Michaela is relentless, and eventually convinces her to rejoin the land of the living for one night, dragging them all to a hipster bar on South Street. It’s enjoyable enough, she has to admit, though she doesn’t drink much; she’s been trying to stop, stop with the alcohol and pills, stop numbing her reality. The others look at her strangely. Asher makes some joke about her being knocked up with a mini bearded Frank baby. She doesn’t particularly care.

She’s finally almost happy. She’s still leery of saying she’s there, just yet. But she thinks she might be on her way.

“Let’s make a toast!” Asher slurs, rising up from their table suddenly, his chair scooting out across the wooden floor behind him with a screeching _creak_. “To… uh, what do we want to toast to?”

“To the return of Laurel,” Michaela suggests, slinging an arm around her shoulders.

Laurel cringes, not particularly eager to be the center of attention and growing increasingly overwhelmed by the cacophony of sounds around them, but plasters on a smile. “Please no.”

“Fine, fine! I got one,” Connor announces, and lifts up his beer. “To a night of drunkenness, debauchery, and ill-advised hookups – well,” he cuts himself, reconsidering, “for _some_ of us. And to those among us who have managed to find somewhat stable, normal monogamous relationships in all the fucked-up-ness of our lives…” He drifts off, winking at Laurel. “May we continue to have lots of mind-blowing kinky sex with our significant others.”

Laurel snorts, but clinks her beer bottle against Wes’s, then Michaela’s. “I guess I’ll drink to that.”

“How is it with going with the Beard anyway?” Connor pries, after taking a swig of his beer. “You two back together for good or what?”

The wording strikes her as a bit odd, and she blinks. “Back together?”

“Yeah,” Michaela chimes in, popping an olive into her mouth. “Didn’t you two break up?”

Laurel freezes.

“Break up?” She frowns, eyes flitting around the table, searching their faces before finally settling back on Michaela’s. “When did we break up?”

Connor narrows his eyes. “It was… before the accident. He didn’t tell you?”

“So you mean we weren’t-” She stops, frowning. “We weren’t together when…”

She drifts off, looking around the table, waiting for someone to give her an answer. Nobody seems willing; Connor and Wes are just looking at her, as bewildered as she is, and Asher and Michaela are avoiding eye contact, pretending to read the labels on their beers. And suddenly all those feelings of being out of place come crashing back down on her; feelings she’s been warding off for weeks – months, even. She’d been doing so good, and suddenly all she can think about is how she doesn’t belong here, in this time, and how little she really understands of this world still.

_Back together._ They broke up. _Why?_

And suddenly it’s too loud – all of it. The chatter around them. The music. The laughter. The delicate clinking of glasses at the table next to them. It’s all too loud, and too much, and it morphs into one long, unbearable buzz in her ears, reverberating around in her skull. Deafening. She starts to shut down, her mind giving into the multitude of stimuli, whirring into sensory overload, and she manages to mutter some lame excuse under her breath, slipping away from the table, making her way through the throng of people dancing, and push her way out the door, back onto the street.

Back together. _Back together._ That doesn’t make sense. Frank would’ve told her if they’d broken up. He would’ve.

But there’re other things he hasn’t told her, yet; she doesn’t know how she knows but she just _does_ , somehow. There have been other things he’s lied to her about, and suddenly, suddenly, she’s not so sure he would’ve at all.

“Laurel?”

Wes’s voice startles her out of her trance, and she spins around suddenly to face him, hugging her arms to her body and clutching her leather jacket. He’s just looking at her, eyeing her cautiously but gently, his brow furrowed, concerned – and she isn’t sure how she looks, but it must not be good because he takes another step closer to her.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding dismissively and running a hand through her hair. “Yeah, it’s just… loud in there. I needed to step out for a sec.”

“Oh, okay. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

_I’m not_ , she wants to say, but refrains. She doesn’t know Wes well – not really. She’s always felt a certain kinship with him, like they’re kindred spirits – or were, in her other life – but they’ve never been able to reconnect on the level he’d made it seem like they’d connected before, and she doesn’t know why. There’s distance between them. Coldness, on her part, and he seems to want to bridge the gap between them but doesn’t know how to go about it, has no idea how to begin.

But she trusts him. She looks into his brown eyes right then, warm as honey, undemanding, and she trusts him.

“Connor said… Frank and I broke up. Before the accident,” she says softly, looking to him for confirmation. “Is that true?”

Wes hesitates, but nods. “Yeah.”

“Why?” she breathes, betrayed, a heavy feeling settling in her stomach.

He shifts, a bit awkwardly, then lets out a breath. “I… You never told me why, exactly. But the day after it happened, we went to Ohio together, to find information on my mother. And that night in the car you kept talking about how Frank wasn’t a good person. How he was like your father. How you’d dated someone like your father. You didn’t tell me what he did, but it seemed… bad.” Wes flattens his lips into a line, not sure what to say. “Look, I’m not trying to interfere. I don’t want you to think that. But…” He meets her eyes, sincere. “I’m not sure Frank is the good guy he’s made you think he is.”

She gulps, her chest tightening. “What do you mean?”

“I just…” he drifts off again, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “When he worked for Annalise, he was her henchman. He did things I don’t even know about. Bad things.”

“Like what?”

He hesitates, for the millionth time, then begins, voice low and even. “He drugged a girl, once. And dumped her body in the woods to frame her. He’s framed other people too – for things they didn’t do. For cases. He’s…” He exhales sharply. “He’s not a good guy. I didn’t say anything before, I… didn’t want to freak you out, so soon, after the accident. I knew he was helping you get better.” Another pause. “I just don’t want you to get hurt because you trusted him. That’s all. He left once, and that hurt you, and I don’t want that to happen again.”

“Left?” she asks, her stomach sinking further. “What’re you talking about?”

“It was a month before it happened,” he tells her. “Something happened, between him and Annalise, I think, and he skipped town. I don’t know what it was, or why, but… He only came back when he heard about the accident.”

She can’t catch her breath. Her lungs feel like they’re giving out inside her, collapsing, popping like overfilled balloons. She can’t breathe. Nothing feels real, suddenly. The only thing she’s clung to all these months, the only certainty, the only thing she thought she knew was real, her relationship with Frank… It may not have been real at all.

It’s been a lie. All along.

Wes’s voice intrudes on her reverie, soft but firm. “I know this must be hard to hear, and I didn’t want you to hear it from me. But I didn’t think Frank was gonna tell you. And I thought you deserved to know. And I care about you, I just… I don’t want to see you get hurt like that again.”

She doesn’t say anything, for a long moment. She just stands there, half-numb, only barely able to breathe but hiding it well, and Wes doesn’t seem to know how to proceed, how to comfort her – or if she even _needs_ comforting.

Finally, he manages, dumbly, “Are you… Are you coming back inside, or-”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding stiffly, folding her arms tighter against her chest in some effort to hold herself together, keep the pieces of herself from falling apart all over the place. It’s a half-lie; one she hasn’t quite decided on yet. “Yeah, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Wes nods, and goes, though he lingers for a second, looking like he wants to say something, reach out to her, anything. But he doesn’t; he can feel the wall between them too, can see her curling in on herself, shutting down, and so he goes, with a troubled look on his face.

It’s only after he’s gone that she lets the words replay in her mind.

_Back together. Back together._

They broke up. Before the accident. He’d lied to her – from the very start, from that first day in the hospital, calling himself her boyfriend. Playing pretend. Playing _her_. Using the accident, the holes in her memory, to get a second chance, using her broken mind to his advantage, and suddenly she feels so sick it seeps out of every inch of her, into her bloodstream, that sickness and nausea poisoning her. No. No, no, no.

No.

That can’t be true. None of what he’d said can be true. He could be lying, and she doesn’t know who to trust anymore but for some reason she knows she can trust Wes, knows he wouldn’t lie to her about this, but he _could_ be; all of it could be a lie, every word crafted to serve some ulterior motive, some hidden purpose, and there’s no one to tell her the truth. No one.

Except there is. Only one person. One person who’d swore never to lie to her again. The one who’s maybe, probably, lied to her more than anyone else.

And she knows where she has to go.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're starting to wrap this up!! 
> 
> Herreeeee we goooo

_Knock knock knockknock_

He knows her knock by heart. Always has. He’s sure he always will.

It’s distinctive – a rhythm maybe even Laurel herself isn’t conscious of. Four short raps on his door; the first two quick in succession, the last two with a half-second more between them. He’s grown so familiar with that signal of hers that his ears perk up the minute he hears it, and he sets aside the book he’d been reading, rising up from the couch and pulling open the door.

He knows there’s something off about Laurel the moment he sees her.

“Hey.”

She doesn’t greet him back. She doesn’t even smile; she just stares at him, blue-grey eyes hardened like steel, lips threaded into a tight line. She steps past him and stalks inside before he has the chance to say anything else, her gait tense, guarded, and he scowls, closing the door and turning to face her as she comes to a stop in the space between his kitchenette and living area.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

She exhales sharply, then raises her chin, features set. “You want me to tell you?”

He furrows his brow. “Huh?”

“I said,” she repeats, “you want me to tell you?”

“Yeah, ‘course. I’m your boyfriend, why wouldn’t I-”

“Are you?” she cuts him off. “Are you my boyfriend?”

“Laurel, what the hell are you talkin’ about-”

“ _Don’t_ lie to me,” she spits, and it makes him flinch, the aggression in her tone. The uncharacteristic anger. She pauses, sucking in a breath to collect herself. “The others… they told me. That we broke up before the accident. They all knew except me. Why?” she asks, and raises her chin higher, jaw clenched so tight he can see the muscles in it rippling beneath her skin. “Why’d we break up? And why… why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

He reaches for her, desperate, like an animal boxed into a corner, grappling for any kind of escape. “Hey-”

But she jerks back harshly, almost violently, and steps away, continuing on.

“You promised you’d tell me everything, and you didn’t. W… what else haven’t you told me?” He opens his mouth to say something; he doesn’t know what, just _something_ , but she keeps going, eyes lighting up with a realization suddenly. “You said… Annalise fired you. And you never told me what you did. And you-” Something cuts her off. She manages to steady her breathing, somehow, shaking her head. “You said you were my boyfriend. And you’ve been lying to me this entire _time_.”

Something deep within him fractures, splits down the middle, sends pains crackling through him like static, radiating out from his chest as he looks at her; so hurt, so confused. So distraught. And his stomach is roiling like a storm inside him, churning viciously, and his head is reeling from the suddenness of all this, of her interrogation, and at the same time, some tiny, twisted part of him isn’t surprised. Not at all. This is what he’s been running from, after all – for months.

From the day Laurel would find out about his lies, some way or other, and he’d have nothing left to hide behind.

All he can manage to mutter is her name, lowly. Dumbly. “Laurel…”

“Is it true?” she breathes, voice losing some of its strength. “We broke up?”

Her lower lip trembles, faintly, eyes misting over with tears, and he feels like the worst piece of shit in the world right then, for hurting her like this, again, like all he can fucking seem to _do_ is hurt her. He wants to reach out to her, wants to touch her desperately, but he can tell by her body language that she’ll just push him away, shrug him off, and so he keeps his distance. She doesn’t want to be touched. Consoled. Held. She wants one thing from him, and one thing only.

The truth.

Somehow, his head heavy, he makes himself nod. “Yeah. It’s true.”

She blinks, for a moment, like the words don’t process, like hearing the truth from the others hadn’t fully sunken in – and now that she’s heard it from him she knows there’s no room left for doubt. She shakes her head, very faintly, the movement almost imperceptible, and takes a staggering step back.

“You didn’t-” She meets his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I-”

“Was it… because of whatever you did?” she prompts him, pointedly. She eyes him closely, observant as ever, watching for even the faintest flicker of emotion on his face, the slightest reaction that might give her a clue. “Wes told me I was upset, after. That we broke up because you _did_ something. Something that made me think… you were like my dad.” Fear floods her eyes; paralyzing terror, at the thought of what he must have done, for her to have equated him to that man. “What’d you do, Frank?”

He can’t say it. Not again. _I killed Lila_ – those three little words that’d broken them before. That’d ruined them for good, that’d torn her down, _destroyed_ her. His own twisted, fucked-up version of _I love you_. He can’t do that to her all over again. He can’t.

He _has to_. He’d promised Annalise he would. He’d sworn to Laurel he would, and he’s many things and a liar may be one of them, but he can’t lie about this. Full disclosure. Anything and everything. That’s what he’d promised her.

Even this.

But he stays silent, stupidly. Holds back. He chokes down the words even though Laurel is crumbling before him, looking so much like she had that night an eternity ago when she’d come to him demanding the truth. Wanting to know him because she was falling for him. Wanting all the _bad things_ he’d told her about. Wanting the truth

She hadn’t known what she was asking for then. She doesn’t know now, either.

“He told me you did things for Annalise,” she prods, when he refuses to answer. She approaches him, back straightened, shoulders squared. “That you drugged a girl once to frame her. And framed other people for her cases too. I…” She drifts off, words clogging her throat, too many trying to escape at once. “I thought I knew you. But I don’t.”

“You do,” he insists. “You know me, Laurel, you…”

He drifts off, struggling to come up with the right words, and eventually fails, letting the silence wash over them instead. Laurel exhales sharply.

“You promised you’d tell me everything, about before. All that time I forgot. You said anything. And everything. So _tell_ me.” She pauses, glaring. “Tell me what happened, Frank, or I’m done.”

_Done._ Done with him. She’ll be done anyway, when he tells her, even if she doesn’t know that yet. She doesn’t know what she’s asking for, in asking for the truth – but he has no choice.

So he opens his mouth, and he gives her what she wants anyways.

“Lila,” is all he can muster at first, the name scalding his tongue like acid. “You remember her?”

It’s a stupid fucking question. Of course she doesn’t – but she remembers the basic concept of Lila Stangard, who she was, what she believes Sam had done to her, and so she nods, brow furrowed, wary and half-looking like she’s about to bolt.

_Do it_ , he wants to tell her, bark at her. _Run. Go. Go before you have to hear this, and never come back._

“Yeah,” she says, timid, almost fearful. “Frank, what-”

“I told you Sam killed her. And everyone… everyone thinks he did,” he chokes out, dragging his eyes up to hers, heavy with guilt. “He didn’t.”

Confusion flickers in her eyes. “Then who…”

Confusion, at first. Then, it clicks in her mind, some internal gear slotting into place, and the realization folds itself out onto her face in slow measures; first in her eyes, then in the furrowing of her brow, then in the downward creasing of her lips. She sucks in a breath, and it trembles audibly on the way in – and fuck, she looks so much like she had the night he’d first told her about Lila, that awful night, the night he’d lost her for good, watched her walk out of his life. She’ll do it again. He knows she will.

He’s gone back in time. At first it’d been a blessing. Now it just feels like a fucking nightmare.

“No,” is all she can manage, shaking her head, the whites of her eyes tripling in size. “No, no, no, no, no.”

She stumbles backwards, still shaking her head, mouth hanging agape, like her brain is misfiring in a million different directions and she can’t make sense of any of them, or of the world she lives in; the reality around her, that shaky thing slipping out of her grasp again. And it kills him to hurt her like this, guts him to the bone, and he wants to reach for her but he can’t, never again, not ever. Not after this.

He’s lost that privilege. Lost her.

“You,” she breathes. “ _You_ killed her?”

He can’t breathe. He can’t speak. All he can do is try to go to her, desperately. “Laurel-”

“ _Why_?” Laurel cries, eyes darting madly around the room, like she’s plotting her escape, like she thinks she might be next.

Like she thinks he could hurt her. Like she’s _afraid_ of him, and it’s the same way she’d looked at him the day she’d woken up in the hospital – and he hates himself when he sees it. Hates himself far more than she or Annalise or anyone else in the world ever could.

“I-” He opens his mouth, and lets it fall shut just as quickly. He has nothing to say. No explanations. He doesn’t deserve to explain or rationalize any of this to her and he knows there’s no way he can, but goddammit if he isn’t going to try. He gulps, blinking back tears, warring with every muscle, every impulse in his body to keep from reaching out to her. “It was… because of Sam. ‘Cause I owed Sam. He… you gotta understand, Laurel, what he had on me, I-” He pauses, falling back on an old, tired, stupid fucking line he’s recited before, the same one he recited that night, not knowing what else to say, not having anything else to give her because he’s always been stupid, never any good with words. “I had to.”

“You-” she sputters. “You don’t just _have_ to kill people!”

“Laurel…”

“What’d Sam have on you?” she hisses. “What could he possibly…”

“It’s too-” He stops himself, swallowing. “It’s too much to explain – just, believe me, Laurel-”

“No,” she bites out. “You are not… you’re _not_ lying to me anymore. Tell me.” He doesn’t. He can’t. And when he doesn’t, when he just stands there like a fucking dumbass, looking at her, she bares her teeth at him, feral, cheeks dampened with tears. “Tell me!”

He can’t do anything other than obey. And so, very slowly, voice shaking, he does.

He tells her about Annalise and Sam, and how Sam had dragged him out of the gutter, gotten him a job. Saved him. He tells her about the hotel room. The woman at the bar. The bug and the baby and the car accident. How he’d lied for years, kept it from her. How that night – that dark, horrible night in August when he’d gotten the call from Sam – he hadn’t had a choice.

How Sam had just said _You owe me_ , simple as anything, and the deed was done.

By the time he finishes she’s trembling before him, clutching the last bits of her composure and holding them close to her chest, fighting her body’s flight response and making herself stay, listen to him. And suddenly he’s not sure if this is better or worse than the first night he’d told her about Lila. When she’d left before letting him explain.

But him explaining doesn’t make things better. It doesn’t do a fucking _thing_.

“It was all a lie,” she says, voice shaking, heavy with tears. She looks so small suddenly, so scared. Small as a child. “Everything. Us. It was all a lie, from the first-”

“No,” he blurts out, desperate, frantic. He chokes on a sob, forcing it back, and it aches all the way down his throat like he’s swallowing a burning hot coal. “It _wasn’t_ , it-”

“That’s why you didn’t tell me about the break up. I-I broke up with you because you killed her.” She inhales sharply, meeting his eyes. “You were never gonna tell me. You told me before, and I ended it, and… you were gonna let me believe it never happened. Because it didn’t, right? Not to me? I got… wiped. Erased. You got another shot with me.” Anger surges in her, burning in her eyes. “That was convenient for you huh?”

She isn’t wrong. He can’t tell her she’s wrong. She’s so damn right, more right than she’ll ever know, and her words slice at him like knives, hacking off pieces of him bit by bit until there’s nothing left. Until he feels hollow and empty and sick standing before her, and he doesn’t deserve to be.

He doesn’t deserve to be standing before her. He doesn’t so much as deserve to _lay eyes_ on her. She’s always been his salvation, the good in his life, but he’s always been her destruction, and even after this second chance, this twisted re-do, this rewind back in time, he’s done the same damn thing. He’s destroyed her – and he knows it, then. Knows that in any other world, any alternate universe where they both exist, and he is Frank and she is Laurel and they meet… that he’ll destroy her.

It’s all he can do. All he’s good for. All he’ll ever _be_ good for.

“It was all a lie,” she continues, growing increasingly distraught with every word, bordering on hysterical. “Everything we are. None of it was ever real.” She’s shaking, now, shaking visibly, rattled to the bone, sick. “I thought… this was real. Us. It was the only thing I thought I knew was real-”

“It _is_ ,” he urges, taking a step forward, cautiously. “What we got… It’s not a lie. It _is_ real-”

“Because you made it real, right?” she breathes, with sudden, terrifying calmness about her. “You got to tell me it was real because you wanted it to be. And to me… it became real. You-” Her breathing picks up, suddenly, coming hard and fast. “You-you manipulated my world so it’d be how you wanted. So _I’d_ be how you wanted. So I’d trust you. So I’d think you were a _good guy_.” She’s speaking so fast now he can barely catch her words, raising her voice. Her eyes are wild. She looks like a madwoman and this is what he’s turned her into, _this_ is what he’s done to her. “When really you’re just a monster. A-and I was like your puppet. Your little _robot_ you got to program to believe whatever you told me to believe-”

The words break him. “It wasn’t like that, Laurel, _please_ , you gotta-”

“I can’t trust my own mind anymore. I thought I could trust you,” she sputters, voice going softer but still firm. “I trusted you with my reality, I-I trusted you with _everything_ and you-” She shakes her head, swiping at her cheeks frantically. “You _used_ me. You used my mind, my accident… for your benefit.” A sob escapes her, and she doesn’t try to stop it, hold back, bottle it up. Her voice is quiet, suddenly. Small and soft and hurt. “How could you do that?”

“I just-” He stops himself, swallowing. “I didn’t know what to do… when I got the call from Bonnie about the accident… I couldn’t just… stay away, I-” He steps towards her, increasingly desperate, and he’s sure it shows. “I couldn’t tell you what happened, not when you were so scared. I tried to make things normal.” He shakes his head, knowing how stupid he sounds, not having a damn clue how to sound any less stupid. “That’s all I wanted. Things to be normal for you again.”

“It was all a lie,” she echoes, again, hollow, suddenly distant. He steps forward, and she steps back, raising her hands as if to shield herself from him. “Everything I know… is a lie.”

“It wasn’t,” he pleads. Frank catches her wrists, gently but firmly, trying to get her to listen, to stop ranting, to stay still. To _listen_ to him. “We weren’t a lie, Laurel, you gotta know that-”

“I don’t know anything,” she manages to choke out, recoiling and trying to extricate herself from his grasp. “A-and what’re you gonna do now? Kill me too, now that I know?”

“ _No_ ,” he says, voice breaking. He manages to pull her close, hold her still for a fraction of a second. “I’d never lay a hand on you, you know that. I love you-” He stops, choked up, suddenly. “Just listen to me, I-”

With one swift, sudden jerk she frees herself from him and retreats, backing up again, into the kitchenette.

“How am I supposed to believe anything you say? Ever again? You were supposed to be the one who’d… help me remember. And all you did was lie to me. Pretend we were living some _fairytale_. I was so stupid. And… I-I was so scared. And I needed someone.” A pause. “And I thought that was you.”

She looks him square in the eyes, crying the words now, not yelling; just crying. She’s gone quiet and tearful, and he thinks that’s worse, thinks he’d prefer it if she screamed at him, slapped him, hurt him like he’s hurt her. But she won’t.

She can’t hurt people. She’s not like him.

“It can still _be_ me,” he tries to tell her, though it’s a halfhearted attempt; he’s lost her already and he knows it, but the hell if he’s going to give up, not fight for her even if the fighting won’t do shit in the end. “I’m still me, I…”

“You’re not.” Her voice is a breath now, soft as a whisper. “Not who you made me think you were. But you got to play pretend with me. Play normal. Play _house_.” She sniffs. “Was that fun for you at least?”

The words break him, cut him deep, deeper than she’ll ever know. He blinks back his tears, standing there, helpless and stupid, so fucking _stupid_. “It wasn’t like that.”

_It wasn’t like that_ , he says. But it was. He knows that. She does, too.

Silence lingers in the air, impossibly heavy, so heavy he can hardly breathe. She’s shutting down. Shutting him out. He’s grown familiar enough with all her new mannerisms in the wake of the accident to know that, and he may be stupid but he’s not too stupid not to know there’s nothing more he can say to her. No way to salvage this – whatever they were, once, and whatever the hell they are now. He’d known this day was coming, since that first day in the hospital when they’d shaken hands, when they’d promised to try again. Since the day he’d called himself her boyfriend and tried to erase the past, go back in time.

You don’t get to go back in time. He knows that now.

Laurel shakes her head, stirring him from his thoughts, and goes for the door, clutching her bag close to her chest, swiping the tears off her cheeks and mumbling an indistinct, “I, uh… I should go.”

He shouldn’t try to stop her. He should let her go. He knows this.

But he’s stupid, always has been and always will be, and so he goes after her, giving a feeble, “Laurel, don’t-”

“What?” She rounds on him. “What do you want? Me to stay? Keep… living this _lie_ with you? This was never real. Us. Even if you pretended it was.” She inhales slowly, steadily, and raises her chin, firms up her stance. Meets his eyes; so unafraid. So strong. So beautiful even broken that he aches. “None of this was ever real.”

A moment passes. She turns, again, going for the door, but before she can-

“I love you,” is all he says, all he gives her, knowing it won’t stop her from leaving but knowing he has to say it regardless. She turns to look at him, and he lets himself deflate, sag under the weight of his exhaustion, the weight of every falsehood he’s fed her all these months. “That part was real. It is.”

Laurel doesn’t look like she believes him. Her eyes are dull, features impassive, stone hard – yet somehow he can see a flicker of doubt in them; a flicker of something, like she knows he’s telling her the truth no matter how many times he’s lied to her before. Like she knows he’d never lie to her about that. And he wouldn’t.

He loves her, and it’s killing him, eating him alive. Squeezing tighter like a noose around his neck every second she stands there, poised to go, and he knows it won’t be long before the bottom drops out from underneath him, drops him to his doom.

For a moment he thinks she’ll waver, but she doesn’t, and Frank realizes suddenly he doesn’t _want_ her to. He doesn’t want her to forgive him, come back to him – not when she deserves so much better, light years better, more than he can ever give her; someone to match her light, her goodness, not tarnish it. He doesn’t want her to forgive him right then because he knows all he can do is hurt her, even if he doesn’t want to, even if he tries with everything in him not to. He’s programmed to do it anyway, unable to escape that thing, the impulse, whatever it is, that’s written in his code.

For a moment he thinks she’ll waver. Then-

“Don’t come near me,” she says through her teeth. “Don’t come near me _ever_ again, or I swear, Frank, I swear to _God_ …”

She drifts off. Can’t find the words to form a threat, and she doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need threats to keep away from her. He considers, briefly, reaching out to her again, but he recognizes futility when he sees it.

He knows the end when he sees it.

Laurel lingers only for a minute longer, before she finally turns, opens the door, and vanishes out of it like a ghost in the night, just like she had the time before, as if she’d never been there to begin with. Unable to be with him, his secrets, his darkness. Unable to lay in the bed of lies he’d made for the both of them. She goes, and he watches. Doesn’t call out after her. Doesn’t try to stop her.

This is how it ends, he knows. This is how it was always going to end.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timelines in this chapter and part of the next run parallel to each other in different points of view picking up right after 18, which is a little screwy but kept me from adding a dull filler chap, so. It works.
> 
> I've also posted the final chap right along with this just because they take place at the same time and it didn't make sense to make y'all wait. They're read best one right after the other :)
> 
> Enjoy the riddddeeeeee folks (and I'll be back in next chap's note!!)

She has nowhere to go.

As soon as Frank’s door closes behind her, latching with a metallic click that sounds like the cocking of a pistol to her twisted ears, she’s abundantly aware of the fact. No one to run to. Not a single friend to her name. The world feels huge and dark and unwelcoming, suddenly, like it had right after she’d woken up; a stranger in a strange land that’s rejected her, over and over.

Objectively, of course, she guesses she does. She has friends. Wes. Michaela. Connor and the others. They’re all her friends – by the most literal, clinical definition. People she should feel friendly _with_. People who _know_ her. And people she used to know. People who were her friends too, once, but they’ve never been able to reconnect properly, not really. She doesn’t know if they ever will.

Maybe they were never real either – any of those so-called friendships. Like hers and Frank’s. Fake. All lies. Bonded solely by death and academia and that bloody house of horrors, that awful night she can remember only in snippets.

It’s only after she’s stepped out into the night that she pulls her phone of the pocket of her jeans and finds the screen lighting up with a barrage of texts and missed calls – all from Wes. She’d forgotten what she’d told him at the bar, when she’d said she’d be back then disappeared, and so she dials back with shaking fingers, trying to stop sniveling long enough to steady her voice and only half-succeeding.

He picks up immediately. “Hey, where are you? You never came back, at the b-”

“Are you home?” she chokes out, certain he can hear the tears in her voice, the strain. “Can I, um… Can I come over?”

“Yeah, uh, I’m here.” A pause. His voice is low, gentle, full to the brim with concern. “Are you okay?”

“No,” is the only answer she can give him, low and mournful. “I’m not.”

 

~

 

She’s at his doorstep within half an hour.

He lets her in without hesitation, the corners of his eyelids drooping with worry, and watches her closely as she stalks inside, dropping her bag down onto the floor and coming to a stop beside his rickety little desk, footsteps creaking on the ancient floorboards. She’s been here before – only a few times, but she remembers it. And at the same time it feels disconcerting to be here, in this place, with Wes, who she barely knows, who maybe she never really knew at all.

Nothing feels real, all over again. Everything around her looks like some sort of twisted expressionist painting, all blurred, too-bright colors and wavy lines and distorted shapes. Distorted and twisted and hellish.

“Are you okay?” he asks, closing the door and coming to a stop before her, brow furrowed. “Did… something happen?”

“You were right,” she manages to bite out, somewhat steadily, though she’s sure the tears she’d cried on the drive here are still visible on her cheeks, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. “About Frank. He…” Her throat tightens. She can’t breathe. Her lungs feel hot and heavy in her chest, throat aching. “He wasn’t who I thought he was.”

Wes takes a step forward, melting. “Hey, c’mere-”

But she jerks back, inexplicably, and flinches. There’s no real reason the thought of him touching her should make her bristle like it does, but suddenly the thought of anyone touching her, anyone in this _world_ , in this city she no longer knows, touching her… It frightens her. She feels cold and detached, like she’s some player in a narrative she’s never read before, unable to recite her lines. Not belonging. Again, there’s that feeling of not-belonging rising up, taking hold of her. She _doesn’t_ belong here, in this world. Frank had anchored her. Held her down to some semblance of reality.

A false reality, now. A web of lies so intricate she’ll never have a way of unraveling them.

“Don’t,” she breathes, voice catching in her throat. She shrugs him off coldly, shaking her head. “Just… don’t. Please.”

Wes seems taken aback, blinking, but nods quickly and obliges. “Yeah. Uh, sorry.”

They stand there for a moment in silence, and Wes doesn’t look like he knows what to do, how to take the lead and comfort her, and she doesn’t want him to. She doesn’t know why she came here, not really, but the thought of being alone terrifies her; being alone with her thoughts, with all that sinking, sinister darkness. Eventually, she lets out a breath and sinks down onto the end of his bed stiffly, fingers on her temples, struggling to steady her breathing and stop up her tears

“I’m sorry,” Laurel says, finally, lowering her eyes. “I just – I didn’t know where else to go.”

“It’s fine. It’s more than fine, you can…” He drifts off, and takes a seat next to her. “You can come here whenever you want. And I know you don’t feel like you know me. But you do. And… and you can.” He frowns, sorrow seeping into his eyes. “You wanna talk about what happened, with Frank, or-”

For half a second, she almost does. Tells all. Tells him about Lila – because she knows he doesn’t know, he must not. But something, something innate and built in her bones stops her before she can, makes her choke that truth down. She can’t. She knows the story: Wes killed Sam, because he thought Sam killed Lila. He can’t know that truth, know that it was all for nothing, that it was Frank all along and he killed an innocent man – even if Sam Keating was far from innocent.

She can’t tell him. She can’t. For Frank’s sake. For Wes’s sake. Maybe for her own. _God_ , she’s going crazy. She must be.

But not too crazy to be rational about this.

“I thought I knew him,” she murmurs, sufficiently vague, and sniffles “I thought what we had… was real. But it wasn’t. It was just another lie. Like everything.” She runs her hands over her face, a sob bubbling up in her chest yet again. “All everyone’s done since I woke up is _lie_ to me.”

“I’ve never lied to you,” he asserts, and she frowns.

“You didn’t tell me. About Sam. What we did. And I know… you couldn’t. Everyone wanted things to be normal for me. Treat me with kid gloves. And pretend like we’re normal. And we’re not.” She swallows, thickly. “We’re not. _I’m_ not. I thought I could trust you guys. Frank. And… And I can’t trust anyone.”

“You can trust me, I-”

She ignores him, speaking as if in a trance. “I can’t trust my mind, either. I thought I killed Sam. I’m… remembering stuff wrong. I don’t know what’s real.” She exhales, shakily. “I’m so tired.”

“I know… how it feels,” he contributes, hesitant, choosing his words carefully. “I know what it’s like. To want it all to stop. But it’s not going to be like this forever, it-”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe not,” Wes concedes, voice soft. “And I know I’m never gonna understand what it’s like. What you’re going through. How much it hurts…” He drifts off, sincere. “I know when you’re hurting you feel like you’re the only one in the world who is. And that no one else gets it. And maybe that’s true, but I’m here.” He pauses, and for a second he looks like he’s going to smile before he thinks better of it, and beats the expression down into submission. “I’m your friend.”

She gives a watery scoff. “And I’m just supposed to believe that?”

He frowns, caught off guard. “What?”

“Frank told me he was my boyfriend,” she says, mournfully. Her tears have gone quiet now, the raspiness of her voice the only audible sign they’d been there at all. “And he wasn’t. That was a lie. How am I supposed to believe you? Or… or _anyone_?” Wes opens his mouth to cut in but she keeps going. “This isn’t my life. I thought it would start to feel normal, eventually. But it doesn’t. It’s not.” She lowers her eyes, hands clasping together, hunched over as small as she can make herself. “I can’t be here anymore.”

Wes leans forward, angling himself toward her. “Here?”

“This place,” she says, rising to stand suddenly, even though every part of her feels unbearably heavy, heavy as bricks. “This city. I don’t belong here.”

“You _do_ ,” he urges, and stands too, watching as she collects up her purse. “You do belong here-”

“You can tell me I do,” she says, softly, cutting him off. “Everyone can tell me… I belong here. But I think… I’ve just been kidding myself all along. Thinking I could get back to normal, here. With everything we’ve done…” She meets his eyes, blinking back tears. “I think I need to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Home. My parents. Take a year off from school, or… transfer. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, since I found out about Sam.” She pauses, and casts her eyes downward. “I hate them, yeah. But where else am I gonna go?”

He looks so sad, suddenly, brown eyes wide and shiny. When he speaks his voice is low, sorrowful, and he looks so much like Frank had: wanting to reach out to her but refraining, over and over, knowing he shouldn’t, knowing he’s not the person to her he once was, the friend she knew. Realizing that he can never be that friend again.

“Laurel…”

“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, shaking her head. “I’m sorry I don’t remember… everything we were, I-”

“You don’t have to be sorry. You don’t ever have to be sorry,” he soothes, and approaches her, closer and closer, and she thinks about backing away and half-wants to but doesn’t. “If this is what you need to do, to get better… you should do it. You don’t have to apologize to me. Or anybody.”

She manages a laugh through her tears. “You’re really nice, you know that?”

“Yeah,” he jokes, giving her a small, subdued, rueful little grin. “I know.”

He comes to a stop in front of her, lips pursed grimly, and he reaches out to pull her into a hug; nothing demanding, not asking anything of her, just wanting to hold her against him, console her. And she goes tense, initially, but eventually she relaxes, letting her arms creep up his back and come to rest there, and in the midst of everything, all her confusion and hurt, she feels sudden, immense longing – to know what she missed, with Wes, those memories she’s yet to recover, the ones she may never. It feels like mourning a stranger; some distant, abstract what-if – or maybe a what-was.

What may have been, once upon a time.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” he murmurs into her hair, and she nods, sniffing against his shirt.

“Yeah,” she says, as she breaks away and wipes her eyes. “I will.”

She looks at him for a long moment, and there’re unspoken words between them, so many, past and present and future, and she doesn’t know what to think, of whatever this was, whatever they were; a maybe-friendship. A friendship lost. She knows there’s a bond between them, something on some deep, intrinsic, cellular level, like she’d felt with Frank, and yet at the same time she knows she’ll never be able to fully comprehend it like she once had, not with everything so broken and tattered around them. Not with the holes in her memory and the brokenness of her mind.

She leaves him with that, giving him a slow nod; something like understanding, maybe, though she isn’t quite sure what it is she understands. They’d understood each other, once, and she knows that, and so she nods and turns, and goes, making her way down the stairs and out the door, back into her car. And it’s only after she’s settled that she reaches for her phone, unlocks it, and scrolls through her contacts to find a familiar name; a number she’d once thought she’d sooner die than call again.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Mija?”

“Hi,” is all she can manage; a squeak, thin, croaky, and she wants to say more but she can’t muster it.

Perceptive as ever even while not face to face with her, he notices. “Is… everything all right?”

“No.”

It’s a simple answer; concise and truthful. Her voice wobbles, breaking on the word, and she feels a surge of self-loathing pass through her, for being weak, breaking down, calling him. Calling her father. Running back to him – the very person she’d wanted to escape, him and all his depravity, like a black hole sucking in everything and everyone, feeding off them, killing them.

“What’s the matter?”

But familiar. He’s familiarity. Family. This is right, she tells herself. It must be. It’s home. And this place, this city… It’s not her home.

It never was.

“I think…” she murmurs, staring out at the city streetlights around her, on streets she’s walked but never walked. In a place she’s never belonged. “I think I need to come home, for a while.”

 

~

 

She spends the next few days packing, tying up loose ends at the university in a daze, handing in her resignation to Annalise sullenly, and luckily the other woman doesn’t ask for an explanation because she doesn’t feel equipped to give one, though she does look suspicious, almost like she knows, somehow. She doesn’t sleep much. She can’t. If she sleeps she dreams, and she doesn’t want to dream. If she dreams she thinks she’ll go crazy.

It’s that same dream, the one from before; the one she has every time she so much as drifts off. Where she’s Lila up on top of that roof and there are hands around her throat – only this time she can see the face of her assailant. Frank’s face; once-warm blue eyes cold as ice, unfeeling. His hands – the hands that’d once touched her so gently, made her come – are frigid. Violent. There’s always been a quiet sort of violence about Frank; an air of darkness, something she’d thought maybe she was just imagining.

Now she knows why she’d remembered her. Lila. Red hair and green eyes, the day that poster had caught her attention. Lila.

He’d killed her.

She’d suspected Frank had done bad things, in his past; he’d always been vague, avoiding the topic of his former employment under Annalise, biting his tongue and lying to her every time he did. He’d never been honest with her – from the start. He’d looked into her eyes, right after she’d woken up in the hospital, and lied to her. Made her believe whatever he wanted because he _could_. And stupidly, so fucking _stupidly_ and blindly, she’d trusted him, rebuilding the foundations of her world with his help, rebuilding them with their relationship as the cornerstone.

It feels like Jenga, like a child’s game. Like pulling one piece of the puzzle of her world out from under her and watching everything crumble around it.

She can’t trust her mind. Or Frank. Or anyone. Suddenly she can’t help but wonder if everyone has been lying to her about everything since the very start, to serve their twisted, ulterior motives, their own agendas. To play her, pull her strings like a puppet. She’s remembering things, lots of things, jumbled and mismatched, and now she has no way of knowing if they’re real or not, or if her mind is inventing them, wiring memories together haphazardly to fill in those gaps between.

Frank had helped her. Helped her pick up the pieces and make sense of them. And he’d been lying to her, and suddenly she finds herself doubting the validity of everything he ever told her. The story of them meeting. Everything he’d told her that night he’d taken her to the office after hours, recounting their story. Lies. All of it. Every _I love you_. Maybe he’d never loved her at all – but suddenly she remembers the look on his face, when she’d left him; the words he’d spoken.

_I love you. That part was real._

The honesty. Sincerity in his eyes. Maybe he’d been faking. Probably he had; he’s a good faker, a master liar, manipulator.

The memory doesn’t make her waver in her decision. But it does give her pause.

Frank doesn’t call, or text, and she’s glad; she wouldn’t answer if he did anyway. She’d seen it in his eyes, that night; that look of resignation, knowing there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. She’d found out, before. She’d left him once. He’d seemed, oddly enough, to accept her leaving, as if he knew it’d been coming all along – and maybe he had. She wonders, briefly, why he’d bothered lying to her at all, going to the trouble of recreating some faked relationship, resurrecting something long-dead. Why he hadn’t just let it – and her – go.

_I love you. That part was real._

His words echo. She shakes them off.

Days pass in a blur of alternating sleeplessness and nightmares. Wes and Frank don’t call. Annalise and Bonnie seem content to leave her be. The others, Michaela, Connor, Asher… She never knew them, anyway. Never remembered how to feel normal with them. She hadn’t remembered how to feel normal with anyone except Frank and that’s been torn from her, and now in the face of every person she sees she sees deceit, deception, like vipers at her heel wherever she goes.

Days pass.

Then, four days later, the night before her flight is scheduled to leave, she gets the note.

She steps inside her apartment late, sometime around ten after her last day at the office, and breathes a sigh of relief, elated to be free of that place and everything that’d happened there, and Annalise and Frank and Bonnie and the others, all killers. In two months’ time, maybe three… maybe she’ll forget about them. One day she’ll barely remember their faces. She’ll be able to move on.

Things will be okay. They will.

She tosses her keys down onto the counter with a clatter and shrugs off her suit jacket, heading for the kitchen and grabbing a pitcher of iced tea out of the fridge – and when she goes to reach into one of the cupboards for a glass she sees it, resting on her granite countertop, innocuous as anything.

A piece of paper.

It’s folded lengthways; nothing special, just notebook paper with fringe still on the edge, and her stomach sinks, eyes darting around the room – searching for Frank, because she can only assume this was his doing. That he’s gotten into her apartment somehow, lying in wait to off her too, before she can leave. After determining that he’s nowhere to be found in the immediate vicinity, she reaches down, picking up the little piece of paper and unfolding it hesitantly, not sure what she’ll find.

She stops breathing, when she skims it; the familiar sloppy script, dipping down below and rising above the lines and margins in short, choppy sentences. Stops breathing and can’t remember how to start again, and might never be able to.

In silence, she reads.

 

~

 

Laurel,

I know we’re done. I get it. I’m not gonna try to fix things this time. I know you’re better off this way. Without me.

You did what you said. You tried. I did too, and it didn’t work again. I guess I should’ve seen that coming. I guess I did all along.

I’m bad with words. I always have been. I never went to any fancy Ivy League school or Brown or anything. I’m not smart and I know that. But I know I love you. But I know that doesn’t matter now.

It wasn’t a lie. Please know that wasn’t a lie. I do love you. I love you so much and that’s why I lied and it doesn’t make things better, but I just wanted you to know before I do this. I never got to tell you how much, not even before the accident, back then. So much. I love you so much Laurel. I want you to be happy and I know you can’t be happy with me, and I think I’m starting to get that that’s okay.

There’s only one way to make this right, pay for what I did. Please don’t try to stop me. It’s better this way for all of us. You won’t have to worry about Sam or any of it. You’ll be safe. That’s all I want.

I hope you’ll move on too. I hope you know I love you more than I've ever loved anybody and that’s all that I wanted you to know.

I love you and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything Laurel.

             - F


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ME AGAIN. SO. This is the final chap. This fic has been a looong ass ride. I wrote the first chap over the summer like six or something months ago, and I almost can't believe it's finally wrapped up and all published. I'm quite proud of this fic; I think it's the first I've written where I actually have been completely happy with the plot, because plot just ain't my strong suit usually.
> 
> I've gotten so many lovely comments on this fic and I wanted to let you know each one means the world to me. If you'd be so kind, one final time, tell me what you've thought of this. Y'all know me, so you know I'll be back with more Flaurel fic soon, though I may take a little break just to refocus and recenter myself.
> 
> Thank you all, and for the last time, here we areeeeeee....

And so it ends, like he’d known all along it would end.

From the second Laurel had opened her eyes in that hospital, blankly, not knowing who he was, he’d known this was inevitable, the only ending that would make any realistic sort of sense. From the first time he’d called himself her boyfriend. The second-first time they’d kissed. When they’d made love. When he’d fallen in love with her all over again, further and deeper and so much harder. Through all of it.

He’d known it would end, this ill-fated second life with her, doomed from the start. Maybe there was nothing for it to do _but_ end.

Frank watches her go, eyes empty, chest hollow, numb, and he doesn’t try to follow, or call out after her, beg her to stay. He watches her go like he’d watched her go that night, the night he’d first told her about Lila, ruined that fragile love they’d had with his own twisted sort of _I love you_ , knowing like he had then that it was over. Again, the thought comes to him unbidden; he doesn’t want her to stay with him. It’s better that she goes. She’s better off without him – always has been, always will be.

She never loved him – even if she’d believed she had, after the accident. He’d made her believe that. Twisted her world. Manipulated it for his own selfish gain. She was right.

She’s always right.

And he knows it then, as he watches his door close behind Laurel. He should’ve left that hospital room the instant she woke up, walked out of her life and never looked back, let her go on, forget she ever knew a man named Frank Delfino. He’d been so selfish. So fucking selfish, unable to let her go. He should’ve told her to go home when her parents had offered, so she could heal, rebuild her world and her sense of self somewhere where he couldn’t interfere. He never should’ve picked her for the team, gotten her caught up in all his darkness in the first place, in Annalise’s darkness, stolen her light from her. He should’ve known better. He should’ve left her alone.

But he never could. He never could leave her alone, and he’s so fucking _selfish_.

He’s always been Hades; monster, creature from hell. She’s always been Persephone, thing of beauty, so tempting, so good. All he’s ever done is drag her down and ruin her, and he ruined her again tonight, and he’d seen it in her eyes; the confusion, the distrust. The fear – that nothing she knows is real at all. She’d given him everything. Placed all her trust in him. She shouldn’t have.

He doesn’t know what to do with himself, suddenly. For the longest moment he just stares at the door, retracing her path with his eyes, replaying to her words to him, over and over. _This was never real. Us. Even if you pretended it was. None of this was ever real._ Every time they end he hears them again, like a record skipping, repeating itself.

_It was,_ he’d wanted to say. So real. He’d loved her. He love _s_ her. He loves her with every atom and cell in his body, every beat of his heart, every drop of his blood; he exists simply on this earth to love her – and to ruin her. To adore her so much and to tear her apart every time he gets too close. She’s better off kept away from him, like a doll in a store window; only to be seen from a distance, admired from afar.

He was gone from her life. Erased, after the accident. He should’ve stayed gone. And he wonders, suddenly, if she would’ve remembered him if he _had_ stayed gone after the accident. Remembered tiny, indiscernible snippets of time with a man with a beard and blue eyes. Recalled fragments of the long, languorous sunny Saturdays they’d spent in bed together, laughing and kissing and making love. Dreamed of a man’s kisses, a man’s touch, but never knowing who it was or why she dreamed of it. Holding onto vague, fractured memories of someone she never knew, and wondering who he was. What he meant to her, in her other life.

It would’ve been better. So much better.

He doesn’t know what to do with himself. There’s nothing _to_ do, and suddenly he feels a surge of self-loathing shoot hot through his veins like adrenaline, hot as magma. He’d been stupid to stay with her. Lie to himself and convince himself this would work. Playing house with her. Pretending to be _normal_ – when he isn’t normal. He gave up _normal_ and _simple_ and _stable_ the second he wrapped his hands around Lila Stangard’s throat and choked the life out of her, and he feels his stomach lurch at the thought.

He gave up normal and simple and stable and he doesn’t deserve them now. He deserves nothing – nothing good, at least. He deserves to burn, and he should, and he got away with it, all of it. He shouldn’t have. The thought makes him freeze.

He shouldn’t have. He deserves to burn for this. And suddenly, suddenly… He knows what he has to do.

 

~

 

He stews for a few days in a state of something like suspended animation, either blackout drunk or stone cold sober, never somewhere in between. The pain of sobriety is blinding, white-hot, but he lets himself feel it because if he doesn’t feel the pain, the guilt, the self-hatred, he feels nothing; just some huge, hollow cavity where his heart and lungs should be. Laurel had been his something; his last bit of good in the world to cling to. He was going to start over for her. Change. Become a better man.

But people like him can’t change. He knows that now. People like him can’t change and they don’t deserve to, and there’s only one place in the world they belong.

It’s the last good thing he can do – for everyone. For Annalise. Bonnie. Laurel. The others. And it may not be good; hell, he knows he isn’t capable of doing good, not a single scrap of it, but he can do this, at least. He can do what’s right for once in his miserable life, for maybe the first time ever. It won’t absolve him of his sins, grant him redemption. Fuck absolution. Fuck redemption. They’re empty words. They don’t mean anything. He isn’t doing this for himself. He, or his redemption or salvation or whatever the hell you want to call it, doesn’t matter, now.

Days pass.

Then, on the fourth, he goes to Laurel’s place to leave the letter.

He can’t say goodbye to her in person, and he knows she won’t see him. He doesn’t blame her for that. He doesn’t text or call; it doesn’t feel right, somehow. It would feel cheap. So he writes the letter, hastily, not bothering to give any sort of long, poetic last goodbye. He tells her he loves her, and that’s all he really wants her to know. He tells her he wants her to move on, be happy, and he wants that for her so desperately he can hardly breathe.

That’s all he’s ever needed to know: that Laurel Castillo is at least out there somewhere, and she’s living, and she’s happy.

He picks the lock on her front door when he knows she’s still at the office and places the little folded paper on her counter, and leaves like a phantom, not bothering to take one last lingering look around, at those four walls that’ve seen all their happiness together, all their sorrow, seen everything, and are maybe the only ones that truly know their story in its entirety. No one will ever know their story, he supposes. Not even Laurel. No one besides him.

Maybe it’s not a story worth knowing, anymore.

He goes to the office next, and it’s late on a rainy Tuesday night, and he knows both Bonnie and Annalise have a habit of staying late on Tuesdays. It’s almost eleven when he ascends the front porch steps and knocks on the door, clad in a simple black t-shirt and jeans; no watch, nothing but the necessities. He knocks and waits, and it isn’t long before Bonnie pulls open the door, frowning at the sight of him.

“Hey,” she greets, brow furrowed. “What’re you doing here?”

“Annalise here?” he asks simply, and Bonnie frowns.

“Yeah, why?”

He steps past her, murmuring a vague, “I need to talk to her.”

Frank doesn’t look at her. He walks inside, pushing past the foyer door and stepping into the hallway, and it’s only then that Bonnie seems to snap out of it and follow him, standing on her tiptoes and trying to step in his path.

“Frank,” she says, firmly. “Frank, this isn’t a good idea. You remember what she said she’d do if you ever came back here-”

He stops, managing a wry smirk for her sake. “She said she’d turn me in. Let me rot in jail for the rest of my life. Don’t worry, Bon.” He pauses, letting himself soften slightly as he looks at her; the woman who’s been his family, as good as his sister, who’s forgiven him over and over for the horrible things he’s done, and he still to this day doesn’t know how, and never will. “I got that part covered.”

She seems to realize what he means then, and her eyes widen, but before she can say another word another voice – sharp and cutting – sounds out behind them, from the doorway of Annalise’s office.

“Why’re you here?”

Frank flinches before he can help it, but lets out a breath and meets her eyes, stepping in front of Bonnie, raising his chin. It feels foreign to look at Annalise, right then, and somehow feel as small as a child and not like a child at all. Like an adult who’s grown up, broken away, come into his own. Once maybe he would’ve groveled at her feet to stay, continue his indentured servitude here in this office, indebted to her like a knight, and he still feels so much for her, right then, so much it’s overwhelming. She’s been his fucked-up surrogate mother, in a way, her and Bonnie and their bloody little family, but in the months he’s spent apart from her he’s grown up – finally. And he can stand on his own. He knows what he owes her, the wrong he’s done her. He knows there’s no real way to make it right. There never will be.

But he needs her to know this. He’d needed to come here. He doesn’t know why, but this place had beckoned him, its pull like gravity. He’s never been able to escape from the omnipotent being that is Annalise Keating, the power she has and will always have over him.

“Give us a minute, Bon,” he says quietly, and Bonnie nods mutely, disappearing around the corner, footsteps soft as a ghost.

“I told you never to come here again,” Annalise hisses once she’s gone.

“I know. I won’t, again.” He pauses, knowing what he wants to say but unable to find the words, the right way to craft his meaning. “Laurel… she found out. About Lila. I told her.”

“So what?” she demands, folding her arms. “You think I care if you come crying to me about your girlfriend dumping you? I should-”

“No,” he says, and he knows she doesn’t care, knows that perfectly well. He shakes his head, lowering his eyes. “But it made me realize what I gotta do. To make things right. For you. For everybody.” He clenches his jaw. Swallows again. “I’m goin’ to the cops, after this. Turnin’ myself in for all of it. Lila. Sam. Rebecca. I’ll take the fall.” He stops, voice thick, strained. “For all of us.”

“You want me to congratulate you? For being less of a piece of shit for once in your miserable life and owning up to what you did? You don’t get thanks for doing what’s right. And _nothing_ ,” she spits, venom in her words, “you do will _ever_ make up for what you took from me. What you did to that poor girl. You can let them cart you off to jail and stick you in the electric chair and fry you to a crisp and it _still_ wouldn’t be good enough.”

“I know,” he chokes out. “I know it wouldn’t be good enough. I don’t know why I came here. I… felt like I had to. I always come back here.” A pause. “I always belonged to you, y’know that? You ‘n Sam. You owned me. And I love you, Annalise. Always will. We’re a fucked-up family, but we’re family.” Another pause, longer this time. Heavier. “I know you don’t care what I do. If I live or die. But I had to come here. Tell you I’m sorry – for everything. For the baby… There’s no changin’ what I did, Annalise. Or makin’ up for it. I don’t want to. I… sure as hell know you don’t want me to. I just had to come here.” He manages a cheerless little smile, lasting barely a half-second before it drops. “I had to say goodbye, one last time. Even if it don’t change things.”

Annalise doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t give her time to. He turns, head heavy, and goes for the door – and just as he’s stepped back into the foyer Bonnie comes rushing after him, calling his name.

“Frank. _Frank_!”

He doesn’t turn, at first, just reaches for the door, but she grabs his arm to stop him, raising her voice.

“Frank, stop!” He turns, wordlessly, and finds her standing before him, breath ragged, eyes full of worry. She swallows, ostensibly to steady her voice, and shakes her head. “You can’t do this.”

“You know it’s for the best,” he tells her, resigned to his fate, weary, like a dying man preparing for the end. Welcoming it. “It’s better this way, Bon-”

“Better how?” she demands. “So you can… what, get redemption? This isn’t the way to _get_ redemption, it-”

“It’s not for me,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m not doin’ this for me. If I do this, take the fall for Lila, and Sam, Rebecca… Case’ll be closed. Cops’ll be done with it. You ‘n Annalise, the others… Laurel…” His throat tightens as he speaks her name. “You’ll be safe.”

Tears creep into her eyes. “Frank…”

“There’s no makin’ up for anything I did. I know that. And I can’t make it right. But this…” He drifts off. “I can do this for us, at least.”

“Frank, please… don’t do this.”

He gives her a rueful little grin. “Hell, maybe you’ll all finally be able to be normal. Get normal people jobs. Have boring normal families. Lots of boring kids. Having boring bad sex with whatever boring rando you get hitched to. The whole nine yards.”

“And you? What about you?”

He shakes his head, musters up another weak smile to send her way. “Don’t worry ‘bout me.”

Bonnie deflates all at once, when she seems to realize that there’s no way to reach him, no changing his mind, and so she moves closer, sniffling and raising herself up as tall as she can make herself, and wrapping her thin arms around him. He does the same, holding her fast against him and turning his face into her hair, to breathe in the smell of her, commit it to memory.

“Be careful,” she tells him, tearfully, and he nods, pressing a kiss to her hair and drawing back.

“I’ll be okay,” he assures her, halfheartedly. “I know the rules. Don’t drop the soap and all that jazz.”

Bonnie’s only answer is a sniffle, and she wipes her eyes hurriedly, like somehow she’ll be able to hide the tears there, put on that ever stoic, ice-cold veneer she defaults to, even though she doesn’t need to. She doesn’t need to lie to him. He’s seen the worst of her and she of him, and they don’t lie to each other; they have nothing to hide behind. Frank lingers for a moment, words forming just on the tip of his tongue then shriveling up, dying before he can say them, and he wasn’t sure quite what they were anyway. And they don’t matter.

No words he can give her can change this; where they are, where he is because of the sins he’s committed, the blood he’s drowning in. Nothing can, so he turns and leaves her, stepping back outside into the dark, rainy summer night. Raindrops pelt his skin; colder than usual, but he barely feels them. His vision is a tunnel, mind on one track and one only. He doesn’t let himself look back at the office, at that place of so much horror, at that place where seemingly everything in his life has begun and ended.

He doesn’t look back.

He knows where he’s going.

 

~

 

It’s raining harder by the time he reaches the station.

Frank sits in his car in the parking lot for a while, letting the chill of the night creep into his bones, watching the rain pelt his windshield and tumble off in sheets. He doesn’t know why; there’s no point in delaying the inevitable, putting this off. He feels almost like he’s waiting, though he doesn’t know what for. There’s nothing to wait for, no one who will come after him, no one who cares if he ends up frying to a crisp in the electric chair or getting poison pumped into his veins. It’s better that he be done with this before he can change his mind, flee like the coward he’s always been.

He’s not going to be a coward now. Not about this. Not when this is the last worthwhile thing he can do, for Laurel. For all of them.

He thinks of Laurel. Wonders, briefly, if she’s seen the letter yet. He’d told her not to follow him, and he knows she won’t. She knows as well as he does that he belongs here, and that this is only right, and just. She came to law school believing in the good in people, wanting to see justice served, and this is justice. He remembers what she had been like those first days he’d seen her in class, all bright-eyed idealism and hope and goodness, and that’s all he’ll have to keep him warm, now: memories of her. Memories of her light and happiness and her laugh as he faces this future which he doesn’t think you can really call a future at all.

Just bleakness. One long expanse of bleakness, and time, and nothing, and her. Memories of her.

He has nothing on him; no watch, no keys, no wallet, no phone. He left all that at home. They’ll strip him and take everything, most likely; maybe not today but eventually, and there’re no material possessions he really cares for in this world anyway. He has nothing.

He’s ready.

So Frank sucks in a breath to steel himself and raises his chin, stepping out of the car and into the downpour. He doesn’t bother with an umbrella; somehow, he can’t really feel the rain at all, like his nerve endings have all been deactivated, rendered useless, and he’s existing in the most literal sense but not quite living, not feeling.

He crosses the parking lot and sidewalk, his sneakers splashing in puddles and soaking through immediately, ambling on like a convicted man approaching his death – which he may very well be, and somehow, some way, he thinks he’s starting to be okay with the idea. He looks both ways across the road – though he supposes it wouldn’t make much of a difference if a passing car did in fact hit him now, put him out of his misery – then steps one foot out, eyes locked on the imposing monolith of the police station.

Then, the screeching of tires. The flash of headlights through the rain.

A car, behind him, tearing into the parking lot and coming to a stop.

In the state he’s in he barely hears it at all, and doesn’t look back until-

“Frank!”

A voice, ringing out into the night, muffled by the howl of the storm. Her voice.

Her.

He stops in his tracks, and suddenly there she is, there she _is_ , jumping out of her car and tearing towards him in the summer rain. It soaks her through immediately, to the bone, but she hardly seems to notice, her coat flying out behind her, like a cape, like wings to carry her. Her feet splash in puddles. Her hair clings to her face in damp, dark strands, and yet someone she seems almost to form her own bubble insulated from the rain, manipulating it with some magical power, and for a moment instead of soaking her it looks like the raindrops slide right off, deflected. She looks like a mirage. Like a beautiful dream – and she always was. His most beautiful dream.

It _must_ be a dream, his desperate mind inventing images for him, and with that thought in mind he wills himself to turn, and keep walking, and he only makes it another few steps before she cries out again.

“Frank, _stop_!”

She isn’t real. Can’t be. So he doesn’t turn. He holds his head high, keeps going, staring his fate in the eyes, fully prepared to meet it – and he only stops when he feels the insistent tug of a hand on his arm, yanking him back none too gently, holding him still.

“Frank, stop! _Don’t_!”

The pull on his arm, her touch, that bit of real, human contact, brings him crashing back down to earth, and when he turns this time and sees her, red-faced and red-eyed and breathless, he knows she’s real.

She’s real. She is.

She came for him.

“Stop,” she pants, coming to a stop before him in the middle of the empty street, bathed in the glow of the streetlights that shimmer on the ground, surrounded them both with pools of molten gold at their feet. She shakes her head, raising her voice over the crashing rain. “Don’t… don’t do this, Frank, please.”

“Laurel,” he says her name soft, like a prayer, like he can hardly believe she’s standing in front of him, drenched and shivering, and he can’t. He can't believe it. “What’re you doin’ here?”

“You can’t do this,” she echoes. “You can’t… You can’t turn yourself in, you-”

“You shouldn’t be here-”

“Well I am now,” she asserts, plucky as ever and ten times as unflappable. She stops for a moment, to steady her breathing. “I know… you think this is the way to make it right, but-”

“It is,” he tells her, firm, and lowers his eyes, looking everywhere but into hers. “You know it is. After what I did. Lila… I deserve, to go away for that. You _know_ I do.”

“I know!” she cries, advancing towards him. “I know you do, but… but you _can’t_.”

His heart fractures what must be straight down the middle, clean in half, at the sound of her voice. “Laurel…”

“Don’t,” is all she can say, again, her mind in tatters, eyes wild. “Please, Frank.”

“This ain’t about me. It's about you. If I do this… I’ll take the fall for Sam, too. Rebecca. And you, Bon, the others… Annalise. You’ll be safe. You can move on. Have real lives. Won’t have to worry no more, about any of it.”

He stops, collecting his thoughts for a moment, suddenly feeling the coolness of the rain pouring over him like she’s jolted him back to life somehow, his clothing drenched and clinging to him like a limp extra skin.

“You said… after you found out before, about Lila, that you didn’t want someone like me lovin’ you. And you were right. You deserve to move on. Find some… nice normal guy to fall in love with. Have a kickass career. Pop out a couple kids, one day. Be happy.” His throat feels too tight, suddenly, for any words to pass, plugged up with sorrow at the thought. “You wouldn’t be happy with me.”

“I don’t want to be happy!” Laurel declares, fire in her eyes. “Not like that, at least. And I know… _God_ , I know what you did, Frank, but you just… Fuck you, y-you don’t get to do this. Take yourself out of my life like this. You don’t – you don’t get to decide what makes me happy. And you don’t get to make me _lose_ you.”

“Laurel…”

“They’ll lock you up for the rest of your life. _Kill_ you.”

“Eye for an eye,” he says, simply, trying to cling to his original course of action, his decision, though he can feel his willpower fast slipping away. “It’s the right thing-”

“I know, okay? I know it’s the right thing, I know… I _know_ you deserve it but… You _can’t_.”

“You don’t wanna be with someone like me. You said that. Someone like your dad…”

“You’re not like him,” she says, shaking her head, resolute. She says the words with such fierce conviction, such indisputable faith. “You’re _not_. He-he doesn’t own up to anything. He doesn’t give a _shit_ about anyone but himself, and you…” She sniffs, again. “You were gonna take the fall, for all of us. To save us. So you’re not like him, Frank.” She pauses. Her voice softens, and she moves forward, moves closer. “I know you’re not.”

“You should hate me,” he says, voice thick with tears. “For what I did. Lyin’ to you. And Lila…”

“I know,” she breathes, drawing back slightly, pursing her lips into a tight line. “I know. And I feel so… sick when I think about it but-” She gives something like a half-growl of frustration. “I’m trying. To hate you. I’m trying so hard a-and I don’t. So please.” She meets his eyes and hers are full of supplication, fear. “Please tell me you won’t do this.”

He pauses. Thinks, for one long, heavy moment.

“I won’t,” he says, finally, and he won’t – because she doesn’t want him to. She wants him to stay with her, stay here, come hell or high water or whatever other forces of nature come for them, and he has to oblige. He can’t refuse her that, not now. “Promise.”

For a moment they’re silent, standing mere feet apart, and she feels so close but it also feels like miles, light years between them – again. They stand there in the middle of the emty street, letting rain beat down on them from above, and she’s positively sopping wet now, raindrops clinging to her cheeks, her eyelashes, but her eyes shine through, blue-grey and clear and firm, fixed on him. There’re sirens in the distance, blaring faintly a few streets over, muffled by the rain, but it isn’t quite a thunderstorm, howling and rumbling and raging, sky split in half with lightning; it’s just rain. Calm and not calm. Chaos and calm – like the both of them.

“You followed me,” he blurts out, dumbly. “I told you not to.”

“I know. I tried not to.” She swallows, shaking her head. “I couldn’t let you do this, I just-”

“Laurel…”

“It’s messed up,” she says, suddenly, voice sharp. “Us. A-and I don’t know what we are. And… I don’t know what this thing is, anymore. If we can ever be together again. But… I don’t want it to be over.” A pause. “I don’t know a lot of things. I’m never gonna remember what we were. But I know what we _are_.” She moves closer, determination in her stance, in her eyes, in the angle at which she holds her chin. “I know I don’t wanna lose this.”

“Laurel…”

“You lied to me. About everything,” she murmurs, suddenly morose, and he steps forward, her determination flowing into him. “And that’s… that’s not okay-”

“I know. I can’t fix it. I can’t… fix any of what I did. But I meant what I said, when I said I loved you. I do. I love you so much.” Closer. He’s so close to her now that he can feel her breath hitch in her throat, her limbs loosen, pupils dilate. He shakes his head, and leans down, pressing his forehead against hers and bringing a hand up to rest it on her arm, but not embracing her fully, not daring to do that. “That part was real. It _is_.”

Laurel doesn't answer; she doesn't have to. There’s nothing more to be spoken between them, no more superfluous words, promises. There’s nothing more to say except that she understands – and he knows she does.

She looks at him, meets his eyes. And he knows she does.

She leans in closer to him, letting her weight rest on him, like a crumbling pillar falling towards another to hold itself up. She looks so tired, worn down by the world, by the chaos of her mind. So tired and so beautiful, and he lets his hands come to rest on her arms, anchoring her against him, reminding himself that she’s real, reminding _her_ that _he’s_ real. He doesn’t know what she’s been through, the torment of these last few months. He’ll never fully understand and he can’t make it better, protect her from the past, from the demons in her own head, real and not real; some still hidden away in deep dark places even now, awaiting the right moment to come worming their way out.

He knows she doubts her world, and everyone in it, and him most of all. He knows it’ll take months – hell, maybe even _years_ for her to trust him again, if she ever does. If she even still wants to be anywhere near him in a month’s time, or if she’ll decide they’re simply too broken to go on.

He doesn’t know how long this will last, if they’ll make it. If they’ll start to take flight together only to be shot down on the cusp of happiness again by all the death in their past, all that darkness. He doesn’t know where they’re going but he knows where they’ve been, and he’ll tell her where they’ve been, tell her everything, rebuild her world with his own two hands, with his sweat and blood and agony if he has to. She knows him now, like she’d known him before the accident had reset their life together. She knows him, what he’s done, and she chose to come after him. She chose _him_.

Shouldn’t have, maybe. But she had.

You can’t go back in time, and Frank knows this. He’s always known it. You can’t go back in time and they haven’t; they never could. And he doesn’t want to, anymore.

They’re facing the future instead, now. And they’re facing it together.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://laurelcasfillo.tumblr.com/)!


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